Pop-up window that cannot be closed

An old man’s mobile phone has an advertisement at the top of the screen saying “0.3 yuan has been automatically credited to the account today”, and at the bottom is an advertisement “receiving red envelopes”. When the family members delete the app, the advertisements are still popping up on the screen. The 80-year-old phone owner couldn’t tell where these advertisements came from. He just felt that “the desktop is getting fuller and fuller, and the phone is getting more and more stuck.”

It is not uncommon for mobile phones to be dominated by pop-up advertisements. Compared with young people with short eyesight and quick hands, it is more difficult for the elderly to escape from these advertisements. Recently, reporters from The Paper used “pop-ups” and “elderly people” as keywords and retrieved 410 related complaints on the Black Cat Complaint Platform. After deduplication, they obtained 387 pieces of valid information: 285 related to pop-up ads inducing consumption, accounting for 73.6%; 98 complaints contained expressions such as “incorrect touch,” “incorrect click,” “incorrect click,” and “incorrect operation” in the text of the complaint, accounting for about a quarter of the valid complaints.

Why are there more pop-ups on the elderly’s mobile phones and are they more difficult to close? Why can people be taken all the way to the payment page if the order is delayed once? According to industry insiders, behind this is a complete “traffic monetization” industry chain.

Ads kept popping up, and more than 130 apps were deleted in 40 minutes

When he returned to his hometown, Zhou Yang (pseudonym) picked up his grandfather’s mobile phone. The moment the screen turned on, he was stunned: the original wallpaper could no longer be seen on the phone, and the desktop was occupied by various advertisements disguised as “red envelopes.” There were several screens of application icons that he had never seen before.

Grandpa has the habit of watching short videos. Zhou Yang guessed that most of those applications were automatically downloaded by the elderly after clicking on the links when watching videos. There were many unknown mini-games on the desktop, as well as various “software pretending to be cleaning.” He was not sure whether the applications really had corresponding functions, but advertisements would pop up over and over again, and the close button was small, making it difficult for the elderly to detect them.

Zhou Yang told The Paper that when he was deleting apps, advertisement pop-ups were still serious. He spent more than 40 minutes deleting more than 130 apps in total. As a young man who is proficient in using smartphones, Zhou Yang found that some applications could not even be deleted, and would even “hide themselves” on the desktop and settings. He turned off all functions such as “Allow system settings to be modified” and “Install other applications within the application”, and then prohibited the phone’s built-in app store from being connected to the Internet. “I hope these applications will not be resurrected.”

The various applications on Grandpa Zhou Yang’s mobile phone are called “quick applications”. The so-called quick applications were originally a convenient way built into the system that can be used without downloading and installing. Developers can achieve “once development and multi-vendor operation” through a unified interface. However, due to the abuse of technology, it has become a hotbed for pop-up advertisements.

CCTV has previously quoted industry experts in reports as saying that it is often an APP on the mobile phone that directly pushes pop-up advertisements. Some apps push pop-up ads internally, which can be exited by closing the APP, while others run in the background, forming a floating window covering other apps, which continues to interfere with the normal use of the phone. By calling the “Quick App” interface, pop-up advertisements pop up frequently, cannot be closed, and are even secretly bundled for download and installation.

A technician familiar with application development told The Paper that advertisements can be placed on the applications users are using because permissions have been taken away. “If these permission applications are placed in a regular application market, a pop-up box and a prompt will be required. Once installed, If you click on an illegal application, it can directly take away the permissions without your consent. An illegal application is a “trigger”. There are often various “fishing” entrances in the application. If you click on it once, you will install a batch of additional applications. This is a superimposed logic, so there is basically no way to escape. “

Although Zhou Yang’s grandfather suffered no financial losses, many other families were not so lucky. Reporters from The Paper noticed that on the Black Cat complaint platform, some consumers said that after accidentally touching an advertisement, an elderly person at home was granted a “lifetime membership” of a company without clearly seeing the details of the consumption. They did not enjoy any rights and their application for a refund was rejected by customer service. Some consumers also claimed that the elderly at home clicked on inducement advertisements such as “Walk to receive red envelopes” and mistakenly thought it was a reward process. After entering the password, they were deducted 199.07 yuan, and the merchant has lost contact.

How does a mobile phone “recognize” an elderly person? I obviously wanted to turn it off, but why was the fee deducted?

Wang Li has been engaged in Internet advertising sales for more than ten years. In her opinion, the platform has already supported advertisers to carry out targeted advertising based on city, time, age group and group of people. “Nowadays, advertising through programmatic systems has further shortened the reach path. The core of programmatic advertising is to find people, not to buy locations, but large platforms generally control Frequency, for example, a single user can reach ads up to three times a day. If the user doesn’t click on the ads for the first or second time, the ads will not be pushed to them for the third time. In addition, the data portrait will be self-reinforcing. If you always browse the same type of product, you will definitely receive more and more ads of the same type.”

In Wang Li’s observation, some advertisements specifically targeted at the elderly may have no bottom line and do not set frequency control times. “Old people are more patient than young people when watching advertisements, and some hope to receive some discounts by watching the advertisements.”

The above-mentioned technicians said that from a technical perspective, the backend system can also identify whether the user is an elderly person. The first is the font and response speed, and the second is the application installation list. There is an “unspoken rule” in the Android market. Some applications will collect which apps the user has installed and infer based on this. The elderly will not see what permissions have been applied for and will basically click “agree”. The third is the circulation of labels. These labels will be transferred through various channels.

However, in his opinion, these identification methods may not actually be used. What works is a simpler feedback link: for the same advertisement, these people have a higher click-through rate. From “want to turn off” to “deducted”, there are only a few layers of design in between: the first layer is the close button itself, the developer has made the real “×” very hidden, and the “×” seen by the user may lead to another page; the second layer is the link, a preferential recharge advertisement pops up on the page, once the user clicks on the first At the first level, the system determines that it is price-sensitive, and can then export secondary, tertiary, and fourth-level advertisements; at the third level, “deduction” is not technically difficult. The payment interface is adjusted in the background, and the user clicks Confirm to complete the deduction. However, the deduction prompt is often placed in a relatively hidden place, or the font is very small and the color is very weak.