Terrible spam screen takeovers on mobile

[MountainBikeRoamer]

Jeez. Based on the clear ire of rallypanam and the equally-clearly-expressed sentiment on the part of carringb, it seems that this issue ought to get taken seriously by the site owners asap...BECAUSE:

1) Seasoned, hyper-knowledgeable (and fully-engaged/regularly contributing) members like those two individuals are the very BACKBONE of this website. Lose them, and you risk starting to see this tight and active forum community unravel....and the veterans start to fade out.

2) WHY THAT MATTERS --- New Users/Forum members that breeze in here daily don't come here to this forum/website simply to skim around, they come here (and stay) because the knowledge base and community is SO STRONG and so supportive/friendly. If the "backbone group" of veterans has left the building, then nothing of substance will remain to keep the new arrivals around for very long either.

Translation for a site owner:
Watch as number of visitors starts to drop.

Ya can't draw ad revenue from an empty house.

[neatvan]

To add more data points:
I've never seen this issue.
Samsung S5, Android v6.0.1 phone.

Firefox browser on a Windows 7 or Windows 10 laptop.
Typically browse without logging into the site.

[Scalf77]

These sound like existing malware issues , has been on IOS for a while and moved over to android users also. That would be the first thing I looked into.

greg

[rallypanam]

I’m trying to be helpful! We can all go out and get adblockers and Andy and Janet will lose a lot of ad revenue... or Andy and Janet can make the ads much less intrusive and then we don’t need ad blockers, they get their revenue, and everyone’s happy.

[motoidiot]

Rabble Rouser.

[dokaman]

I get them both on my IPhone 7 and MacBook... Lame!

[carringb]

Still happening...

[MountainBikeRoamer]

Okay, here's SOMETHING.....

WCPO -- How to stop 'congratulations' ads on your iPhone
https://www.wcpo.com/money/consumer/...on-your-iphone

A quick news video worth watching at that link explains most of this all pretty fast.

The gist:
If you do a basic google search for "congratulations amazon user pop up ad" you'll see that these pop-ups are all over the interwebz, and that they usually aren't directly the fault of the website you might be on when they occur.

At fault:
Advanced "browser hijacking" malware is on your phone (from somewhere) that takes advantage of frequent weaknesses in many websites to "launch" and do its thing.....)

Lots of specific directions on the web as far as how to fix it on your own phone. And from the sound of it.....
YEP, REALLY....THE PROBLEM IS ON YOUR PHONE.....you unwittingly downloaded it somewhere......it could be any number of sketchy apps you've acquired (or search engines)....

Time to do some app/browser history housecleaning and setting changes.

Additional instructions on that new website that can help fix it.....and all without resorting to an outright ad blocker --- there are "pop up blocker" features built right into Safari on your iPhone that you can activate.

[shadetreevanman]

It happens to me when I follow a hyperlink from an email on my iPhone 11.4.1 like the Sportsmobile Newsletter or an update email on a thread I'm following. Normally on my phone I use Chrome to surf the web, but hyperlinks use Safari. It happened this morning as I perused the latest Newsletter. I do not have my credentials for Sportsmobile saved in Safari so it logs me in anonymously.

No problems using Chrome or my Windows Laptop, or any other website. Hadn't really thought about when the popups were occurring until this thread. While the popups are extremely annoying, I will refrain from following hyperlinks and see if it happens any more. EDIT: Interesting MountainBikeRoamer, I'll pursue this solution.

[Janet H]

This is delivered via ads targeted at iphone users (safari) and is essentially a cookie set as you surf by the advertiser (somewhere) so they can show you more garbage. These ads are served up via this cookie and we have no real control or ability to block them.

Doing a reboot (which purges cookies) offers some short term relief but is not a real solution.

You can also configure safari to block some of these. Here's some help with that: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203987