What kind of phone?

Where do the pop ups occur? In your emails? In apps? In the web browser?

in free apps the ads are there to annoy you to purchase the full paid version. No getting around those.

Its also possible to have a virus on your phone.

More details are needed.

I have pretty good luck with Ad Block plus installed on my iPhone. It’s the free version. Follow the instructions precisely on the app after you install. It won’t stop all of them but almost.

You can change vibration in your settings generally and for specific apps. If you inadvertently allowed push notification for FB or Yahoo or anything else, you've allowed them to override other setting and notify you over your home screen even if your phone is locked. You can google your specific phone and how to stop push notification, vibration, FB alerts etc.

I have an LG phone, android. The pop ups appear when I turn on the screen. No other apps are running at that point, at least no in the foreground. Perhaps they are the free app ads! They are I think. Are you saying there is no way to make them stop?

Which browser are you using? This article might help.

Block ads

I'm not using a browser. I just turn on my phone screen and get the ads. In fact, my phone buzzes when they show up. No windows, screens or software is open on my phone when these ads show up. I'm not even touching the phone when the buzzing happens.

Edited to ad that I could barely read D_GW's article for all the pop up ads that did appear on my laptop screen. And yes, at that point I was using a browser, :) Clearly I have some work to do!

Edited further to add that my Chrome browser on my phone is set to "Block pop ups."

I understand that you aren't actually "using" anything when this happens. But the ads have to have some vehicle to get to your phone - browser, app, game, whatever.

So, I should have said, "Which browser do you have loaded on your phone?" There is a pop up blocker you can load on your phone for Chrome.

And as mentioned above, you can go in your settings and turn off notifications for FB, mail and etc.

I've never had a pop-up ad on my phone (iphone). I can't even imagine how annoying that must be!

I just read your edited post - it sounds like you might have a virus on your phone. Try downloading AVG antivirus from the Google play store and see if that helps.

There are a number of possibilities.. yes, could be a virus (I've had no experience with one on my phone so can't weigh in here or share "symptoms". It could also be that you have opted in for apps/services to send notifications.. it could be messages, news blurbs or "notice of things of interest to you" (read: ads).

I allow some notifications but not lots. I get notifications when something has been shipped or delivered from Amazon, for instance. I also receive headline news from NYT (which I threatened to turn off the day I received notice of some actor or such masturbating in front of a woman.. NOT the kind of "headline" I want to receive at work). My bank let's me know when I've received a deposit or made a paypal purchase. That's about it off the top of my head.. but again, I very much limit what apps/services can send to me. My recommendation is to closely check out the apps you have installed (by you or by the factory) and what they are communicating.

I suspect that it is one of my apps that is the gateway to the ads, maybe even more than one app. I'm going to try and lock down the ones I have (I have very few actually) thanks for that tip! Then I think I need to download an anti-virus app. I want a good one, but I don't know about virus protection on my phone. When I do browse on my phone, I use Google Chrome. I use a lot of the Google apps on my phone, which is why I use that browser.

Edited to add that some supposed anti-pop up or anti virus software, particularly free ones, may actually be gateways for ads. I suspect that is the case on my phone, I think I have some free "phone protection" app that I downloaded that is causing a lot of the problems. I am pretty familiar with keeping my laptop virus free, but not my phone. My laptop has anti virus software. Do smart phones have that in place when you get them?

As far as I know, most smartphones do not come with virus protectors. Malwarebytes has a version that works on android phones. (Alas, it isn't available for Apple products yet.) It's my favorite virus protection. There is a free version that has limited functionality that you might want to try. The paid version is definitely worthwhile. I use it on our desktops and laptops. I started using one of their products to clean up something that Norton Antivirus missed. I ran it in parallel to Norton for a long time before letting go of the Norton. Oddly enough, it didn't fight with Norton. I doesn't seem to conflict with Windows Defender either. which is a standard but inadequate part of any Windows package. I also suggest using DuckDuckGo for your browser. The results are not always as good as Google but it doesn't track everything you do the way Google and Chrome do.

My immediate approach would be:

1. Turn off notifications on every application (app)
2. Find your browser settings and clear history and cookies. You will lose information that makes your access to various web sites friendlier. You will also get rid of a lot of the junk that is helping to make your phone hard to use.
3. Install anti-virus software and scan the phone.
4. Assuming that all is well, start turning on notifications in a systematic way - one at a time - to see what is ok. I'd start with things like my bank or credit card. Those are the only things I allow to alert me. All of my other notifications go to email.

You could do a factory reset of your phone and carefully add apps only as needed.

I deleted as many apps as I could when I got my phone, so a factory reset would actually give me more apps. I looked through them again last night, and I think I have deleted as many as I can. I tried to delete Instagram and Google Hangouts, and the best I could accomplish was to de-activate them. There's a app called "Lookout" which is supposed to be a protection thing, "in conjunction with Sprint" which is my service provider. Any real protection costs money, which I would be OK with spending but I have no idea if "Lookout" is any good or will not be a gateway for more junk "notifications" on my phone. I have managed to stop the vibrating for Yahoo e-mails and FB posts, but I still get FB pop ups when I turn on my phone. The ads seem to be intermittent. The only app I have that has pop up ads is my voicemail, which I may look into changing. It was the default app that came with my phone. You have to pay to get it "ad free."

I suspect the FB app is the gateway for some of this stuff, but I do use it, and I liked that with my smartphone I could take a picture and then post it, unlike before when I had to download the photos from my computer at home. I like my weather apps, but they could be a source of ads. Another app that is suspect would be Yahoo e-mail. I use that too though, so I dunno . . . It kind of burns me because I pay for my phone quite handsomely and it seems like I shouldn't have to put up with ads. This will only get worse because too many people are using the Internet to circumvent paying for content . . . and I suppose free communication that the Web allows was too good to be true for long. Someone has to pay for the infrastructure and services . . .

I am thinking you have malware. I used FB on my iPhone for a while and NEVER had ads or pop ups on my iPhone. Of course , iOS is completely different than android.

FB is a memory hog, too.

If I want to use FB on my phone (which isn't often), I log in via the browser. Try deleting the FB and see what happens. You can always add it back.

Another issue is depending on your settings, many of these apps can be running in the background and using data. Even if you have unlimited most companies ratchet down the speed after you go over a certain amount.

That's interesting since I wanted to use FB on the browser, I definitely did not want the app. But in my Chrome browser, it kept forcing me to download the app. No matter what URL I used, I could not get the FB Web page to load, only the "download app" screen. Same with Netflix and Yahoo mail.

Edited to add that I think I do have a malware app, but finding it is proving to be difficult.

I have no problem on my iPhone. However I simply avoid websites that produce a barrage of ads and I no longer use FB. Ads are a common vehicle for malware. Yahoo keeps pressuring me to switch to their ad-laden version of email but I just stick with the free use through the iPhone email app. Interestingly that fails to work sometimes which I attribute to Yahoo's efforts to get me to quit using it.