iOS : Unwanted auto redirect to AppStore

[Stéphane LAGOUCHE]

Hi,

Many of our iOS users are complaning about automatic redirect to the AppStore, without click. This appends in our app France Press, but not only.

Complain is always the same "after 20 to 30 sec in the app, the app is leaving automatically to the appstore"...

We really suspect Admob. We are tracking the call of delegate method adViewWillLeaveApplication . It shows a high for few weeks now. But this high is not visible on the admob stats. So no click increase, but major increase of redirects.

We use mediation with both Abdmob and iAd, refresh rate 30 sec.

We found this interesting post of Tech Crunch :

http://techcrunch.com/2014/01/06/shady-app-install-ads-are-automatically-redirecting-mobile-users-to-app-store-google-play/

Could it be a javascript injection by a publisher in his banner ??? (as GADBannerView seems to use UIWebView)

It is really annoying. Our apps became quite un-usable for some users.

Do you have any suggestion, similar experience ???

Thanks for help.

[Michael Mac-Vicar]

Hi Stéphane,

Have you found anything else regarding this? We have also problems with one of our biggest apps, our users are reporting random redirects to the app store. We have many ad network in the app: admob, iads, chartboost, heyzapp, applovin, vungle and adcolony, we usually only work with the first 3 and this is the first time we have issues so I tend to suspect more of the others. No mediation at all. You are talking about a native app right?

It can be javascript injection but I have no idea how they could be doing that, When requesting an ad most of these ad networks only download the image and the callback urls (impression, click notfications, etc), however Ihave seen that at least applovin downloads html with some javascript on it.

I would also love to know if admob is aware of any vulnerability in their past SDKs.

Best,

Mike

[Eric Leichtenschlag]

Please download iOS 6.9.3 from https://developers.google.com/mobile-ads-sdk/download#downloadios. It addresses autoclick vulnerabilities from earlier versions.

Thanks,

Eric