Amazon winner pop ups on my iPhone

ArtStoneNC wrote:

More transparency in the browser for advanced users (like view source code) would help, as well as providing a way to remove website site data more efficiently than all or none.

You can remove website data on an item-by-item basis. In Settings/Safari tap Advanced (last item after scrolling up). Website Data will list all data by site if you tap Show All Sites.

Web Inspector lets you access the Developer's Menu when connected to Safari on a Mac.

Experimental Features gives you other, fine-grained options.

Hi there. I have been having the same problem and it’s been infuriating. Clearing history and browsing has nothing to do with it. I’ve done it a bunch of times and it hasn’t helped at all. What does help periodically however is going into SETTINGS > SAFARI > ARVANCED > JAVASCRIPT DISABLE (make sure the option is NOT green). This will stop the pop ups, until you have to turn the JavaScript back on - and you will as many websites need it enabled. However, when it’s off, the problem is not there. So it’s an obvious issue with JAVA. Fix it APPLE!!!

Deleting cookies does not solve the issue. Somebody has figured out a way to bypass Apples pop up blocker. I did a complete reset (erase all content and settings) and started over as new phone. Do not do a restore or you will just restore the problem. This worked for several weeks. Slowly downloading apps as needed. Remember- besure your photos and other important info is saved to iCloud and that you have a backup. Again, set up as new phone because if you restore from a backup you will just restore the problem.

The problem came back shortly after downloading the weather channel app. I’m not sure if it’s the problem but resetting phone again without downloading twc app.

Please read the last several pages of this thread, and you will learn that this ad is not a pop up so therefore a pop up blocker cannot help and this problem is showing up on devices other than Apple so not an Apple issue. You will also find out the best way to stop it—download an ad blocker.

Unfortunately I do not have a spare phone to test my theory. The picture I included have some of the sites that I was directed, mostly these *.top website. I think once you visited those site the phone is forever infected. I'm curious to know if there is more than can be done to get rid of it. I could install some app to block it. But I think the malicious script still lives on my phone. Unfortunately I don't see the option to delete safari. If I can delete safari and reinstall it, I wonder if the Amazon winner popup will show up again after visiting cnn and msn.

There is also another possibility that these malicious codes are so advanced that it managed to hide somewhere not related to safari, and regularly send commands to safari to go to one of these *.top sites. But whatever it is, it must have a long list of these *.top websites to go to, unless things are happening so fast that there is actually an intermediate site that it always go to before hitting one of those random *.top sites. If that were the case then I could just block that one site.

Your answer has been given here multiple times. You’re going to have this problem with each and every phone that has a browser, whether it’s an Apple device or Hyundai one😁 I’ve been fortunate in never having seen this issue due to my long term use of an ad blocker. But if I were just starting this process I would clear all history and website data, only once because that alone will cause you a lot of headaches for a while. Remember when you do this on one device it spreads through every device including your computer that is signed into the same iCloud account. But after having gone through that, force quit Safari and then immediately download one of the recommended ad blockers and activate it. Bingo! your problem is gone.

Its unclear whether it’s one site and ad in particular that then causes this to happen on other sites. For my wife it was TheHill.com. She wasn’t seeing this on any other site. The ad blocker cured this. However a word of warning to Facebook app users. She ran into this once using a link from FB. This was after the installation of the ad blocker I believe. But given that and all the other FB drama going on she has deleted the app and installed Friendly for Facebook that has an ad blocker that can be enabled. Not one issue since. I’ve never had anything to do with FB so I can’t comment on what issues it might cause other than what my wife saw. Yelling at Apple, or really just us is juvenile. You have your solution. Use it or go back to a Motorola Razr flip phone. Either way your problems will be over.

So in turn, this means apple ether acknowledges there is a problem and allows it to happen bc they are making money.

Do you have any idea how utterly, ridiculously wrong that statement is? I would have to say, no.

There is no problem Apple can do anything about. Or Microsoft. Or Android. Or Samsung. You get the idea (I would hope).

You want to avoid ads? Turn your TV off and never turn it back on. Disconnect from the Internet entirely for the rest of your life and never use it again. Never read another newspaper, magazine, or anything else with ads printed in it. Never look at the side of a bus, or the walls in or out of a store or airport. Basically, lock yourself in a featureless, windowless, soundproof room and have someone slip food and water to you through a slot in the door.

Apple doesn't "allow" anything to happen. They aren't in charge of the Internet. They have NO SAY in what the owner of any given web site does with THEIR OWN content. If they want to get paid by an ad company to put ads on their site, there isn't a single thing anyone else can do about it.

Apple has a closed architecture. For a browser to get in the App Store, it must use the WebKit engine. APIs must be used only in ways Apple deems acceptable.

In order to do whitelisting, ad blockers have to be passed the URL. There is your proof.

You are being quite disrespectful here friend. Let’s view things with an open mind. Not just an apple rules the world style. I do not believe in any conspiracy theories. I am noting that these pop ups are not on the website side of the board. They are browser based. Just as Trojans are based towards one OS. I give a reasonable explanation and your answe is SO WHAT?? Quit acting like a child. I’m not here for excuses or for explanation. I am here to brainstorm with other CUSTOMERS of apple to find a way to fix or work around the problem on our, the consumers, side of the problem. You are acting like my 6 year old child. I am done arguing with you. You have a much different point of view than myself. I accept that. We all have our own opinions. No instead of enemies we can be friends, respectful adults, and work together to solve issues together or we can ignore each other like kids. Any directions this is a well know issue. Despite the OS, the company behind the devices, or the browsers used, there needs to be a fix. Has anybody contacted Amazon to see if they have any feedback on these pop ups? Their name is being used in the ad. So either way they are involved. I would like to think they are not driving the ads. So somebody has used their trademark/copyright to lure or post these ads. If anybody should be involved in a resolution they should be involved. Even though they have no control over the browsers, they do have the ability to sue or investigate the cause, origin, and company behind the ads.

Let’s view things with an open mind.

I am more than happy to do that. Your first question was well stated, and I answered it. Your following replies kept adding nonsense and accusations that Apple was somehow not only responsible for the ads, but profiting from them. Statements like that can't be left unchallenged. If they are, later users reading the topic assume they may be correct because no one challenged them.

Yes, users have contacted sites where these Amazon redirects occur. Lawrence has mentioned it a least twice in this topic. Those sites must have complained to the ad serving company because those particular types of ads then stopped on that site. I'd be miffed, too, if an ad I'm allowing a company to post on my site literally moves the user away from me.

You can't sue over ads, unless they're breaking the law. Such as bait-and-switch, scams, etc. An ad that truthfully represents the product, even if extremely annoying, cannot be subject to a lawsuit. Not from you, anyway. The owner of the site may have a legal right to sue. Especially if the contract they signed stated no adult content ads, ads for pirate, or other illegal file sharing sites, and such ads appear anyway.

Ads have been a problem since the very first email spam, and have only grown as users move their viewing habits to streaming and other content sites. Advertisers put their ads where the largest audience will see them in order to get the most bang for the buck. As insane as the per 15 second block of ad time costs for the Super Bowl, advertisers pay it. Why? Because millions of people watch it. Companies like Budweiser routinely announce a large uptick in sales for the couple of months beyond game, making much more in those months than they would have on average, otherwise. As steep as the cost of the ad was, they far surpassed the cost of that ad in sales.

All of that adds up to - ads are here to stay and will only continue to increase. Using an ad blocker is one way to stay ahead of them. It's easy, and there are free ones that work very well. It makes no difference that Apple themselves didn't write it. As in, why should it? Apple doesn't have an image editor, either (and I sure don't count Preview as useful), but I have no qualms about using Photoshop.

or change settings like java to fix it

That will probably never happen.

Not that various vendors couldn't give you an option in the browser to block redirects, but that would break things that aren't an ad, or malicious. Such as, a favorite site moves to a different hosting service, or they set up a new server. The IP address has changed. To prevent user's bookmarks from sending them to a dead URL, they leave the old one up for 6 months (or whatever) with a note the site has moved and to please update your bookmark. In a few seconds (if they set it up that way), it then automatically redirects you to the new URL. Or, there's no note at all on the old site and it instantly jumps you to the new site. I've had more than a few of those over the years.

There doesn't even need to be an old site/server running to do that. If I were to simply change the name of my site (still being hosted on the same server), I can set it up so when users enter the old .com name, it automatically redirects them to the new .com name.

Too many variables to make things work for everyone.

And another person who didn't read beyond the first post.

Once again: Apple cannot fix the Internet!

The solution has been provided at least a dozen times, had you bothered to read more of the topic.

Install an ad blocker. There are free ones in the App Store. I use the free version of AdGuard. Works very well. Just make sure to go into the app and turn on the option to block Annoyances.

That's just ludicrous.

Why? Surely you're aware of the constant cat-and-mouse games between users and spam/crooks/ads? Yes, Apple is a large company with lots of very talented programming engineers, but people seem to think that means they can perform miracles overnight.

Popups and (in the case of these Amazon annoyances) redirects, it's just another thing all vendors of devices and web browsers have to deal with.

Spammers find ways to get pure spam past automated filters by adding hundreds of nonsense words and gobbledygook sentences to them, and other tricks. Popups get blocked, and the scum who want to force you to see them figure out how to get around the current blocks. Apple, Google (Chrome) Firefox, all then have to figure out how they got around the block and fix that. Because the vendors have gotten pretty good at blocking all popups, they change the tactic to redirects.

Remember when popups would freeze all browsers because you couldn't do anything until you dismissed the scam popup (you're computer is infected nonsense)? Which didn't work because the last JavaScript command upon closing the popup was to immediately redisplay the popup. Apple finally killed that trick by not allowing a popup to disable all other browser actions. You can now simply click the back button and Safari will ask if you really want to leave the page. With such a simple way to get out of popup the scammers can't do anything to prevent, these types of scam web sites almost all immediately disappeared. Where we used to see users here of at least 5 per day (and those are just the users who came here looking for help), we now see them maybe 3 times a month.

Will Apple someday include ad blocking in Safari? Maybe. But until then, why not use a free, simple, and very effective alternative from the App Store? I didn't even bother to clear any history, cookies or cache data from my iPhone. Once AdGuard was installed and enabled, all unwanted redirects stopped, and almost all ads stopped loading on the sites I visit.

Toni466 wrote:

Thank you for being slightly less hostile in your response than the first response was.

First of all, if this is supposed to be the be-all and end-all solution, then I'm not sure why can't it be it saved to the first page

The solution to the problem as it existed AT THE TIME OF THE INITIAL post 6 months ago is at the top. But your problem is not the same; the original post was for pop-ups; you have a web page that LOOKS like a popup-up but is actually just a web page. If you had posted a new message rather than tagging on to a 6 month old thread you would have gotten a solution that would apply to your problem. And that solution is an ad blocker, because in reality what you are seeing is just an ad.

It is not an iPhone problem; it appears on Android phones and tablets, Windows computers, Mac computers - anything with a web browser.

Here's additional information that you would have been given if you had posted in a new thread: Dealing with Safari popups that won't go away

When do you plan to do this, because I see you are still posting the same tired argument, months later.

Listen, truly: I get your frustration. I'm a semiretired PC tech who is still having to explain that Twitter/Facebook/MySpace/hotmail.com/Microsoft/AOL/usenet is NOT going to start charging per message, or get deleted, etc if people don't forward something to 18 friends, count to ten, say a prayer, and then watch something turn blue. But you need to let it go. Your "fix" is not feasible- some of us need to check the weather, or purchase things online, or check stocks, etc. Not going to a website with malicious advertisers works, of course, but you often don't know until it is too late, and then if you need that website anyway...

You can say apple has no part in this, & no way to fix it, but that's just incorrect. Aside from the enormous clout apple could bring to bear on webministrator's responsibility in vetting their advertisers, on my PC and android (which of course DO get these, as you've said), there are simple ways to stop it. Apple could provide us with similar tools, or offer methods to blacklist ad-servers like cloudfront.net before they take control of safari, with options to allow access IF needed. They just refuse to release their death grip on their precious OS, even at the cost of functionality. That is poor service, in spite of the many ways I will grudgingly admit that iOS is superior. My next phone will most likely not be a iPhone, simply because I am a power user that demands access and control of every aspect of my devices, even at the cost of having to learn how.

I'm just saying, man: give it up. You're helping to keep this thread alive by belligerence alone, and I assure you that is a quick path to burnout. You seem like a fairly knowledgeable (if annoyingly "appleogistic") person, and I might need your assistance one day for a problem with a real solution. Sit back in your knowledge, enjoy your non-use of sites that inject malware scripts, and let this thread wither. I just wasted an hour reading through useless "help", from people that know what they're talking about, all the way to those who think that they have pocket magic. Peace and quiet to you, sir. Especially the quiet. ;) (Sorry for the wall of text, but I was inspired by the plethora of tiny letters I just finished reading through.)

Lee