How to trace down and uninstall adware (notification area variety)
Got an advertisement in your notifications area that you’re not expecting? Here’s how to trace down what’s causing it.
We start with the above image. This ad for Credit Sesame showed up in my notifications today and was unusual as for all the apps I install, none of them push ads at me. Rather than tapping that ad, long press it and you get a screen that looks something like the one below.
From this I know that the name of the app pushing that ad is “App Stack” – your spam provider will have a different name. I can choose to disable allowing it to notify me here and be done, but I want the thing off of my phone.
I check the launcher, of course App Stack isn’t in there with all my apps, it’s hiding. So you go to settings, apps…
Scroll down until you find your spam notifier, in my case it was “App Stack” which evidently is Sprint bloatware that I’d uninstalled a long long time ago that was reinstalled automatically after the issues with the botched Note 8 firmware.
I chose to remove App Stack (Sprint’s bloatware) and viola, advertisements about my credit disappear from my notification window.
Your spammy notification spammer will vary, but the process for uninstalling adware/notification spam should be basically the same.
Happy not getting advertisements in your notification area!
