Ad popups calling: How to stop them on your phone - Houston Chronicle

Q. For the last several days I have been getting an extreme number of popups on my Android phone whether I am texting, emailing, talking or even playing games. What can I do to stop this?

A. The most likely culprit for these ads is an app installed on your phone. Many free apps included ad pop-ups as a means to generate revenue.

Your best option would be to remove any apps you’ve installed recently to see if they are the cause of the problem.

If you have not installed anything recently, it is possible that an older app has been updated to present advertisements. This sometimes happens when an application is acquired by a new company.

Games are usually the worst culprit for this kind of thing.

If you don’t think it is an installed app, you can try scanning for malware or adware. Malwarebytes does make a version of their software that will run on Android devices and you can download it from the Google Play Store.

The How To Geek Web site has a good article on avoiding Android malware at tinyurl.com/helplineandroidmalware.

Q. After updating my MacBook Pro to Mojave I have been getting a number of pop up warnings that say that certain apps I am running are not optimized and need to be updated. What is all this about and what should I do?

A. With the release of High Sierra any applications that you use that have not been updated for use on 64-bit processors will show this popup when opened. This is a one-time thing and if you proceed, that app won’t pop up the warning again.

The reason this is happening is that Apple plans to drop support for 32 bit software and they are giving you advance notice that these programs will not be compatible with macOS in the future.

There is no set date on when this will happen and it is perfectly safe to continue running these programs.

If you see this warning you can go ahead and check to see if there is a new version available. In some cases there might be an update and in other cases there may not.

If all goes well, the software developers will update their programs over time and before Apple drops their support of 32 bit apps.

For now, it’s just annoying.

helpline@chron.com

Let's block ads! (Why?)

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/jaylee/article/Ad-popups-calling-How-to-stop-them-on-your-phone-14069944.php

2019-07-05 09:00:00Z
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