On Adware – The Mobile Plague

Ads provide a very important function in the digital economy: they enable access to a free service. While most people approach this adware as a user annoyance with little actual harm to the user this usually isn't the case. The issue lies in what additional code ads bring to the device, most of which is unknown to the app creator or advertiser. As a result, this unmanaged code can easily perform additional actions outside the delivery of an ad. It's these surreptitious actions that lead to unauthorized data collection, zombie device creation, browser or device exploitations, malicious downloads, and more. App creators and stores need to thoroughly analyze executing code from the user experience to identify these activities to not only accurately populate privacy policies and consent management platforms but also ensure compliance with data protection regulations. Taking responsibility for knowing what vendors are brought to the user experience will mitigate most annoying, malicious and regulatory violation problems.  Read Less