Looking for some help with my Galaxy S7, I apparently picked up a virus or malware or something.  When browsing through Facebook, I try to read articles, but probably about half the time, I get redirected to a "Rewards Center" of some sort.  I'm unable to read the article and usually have to exit out of the app and restart.  I've googled the problem but haven't found a useful or effective solution.  I also went through and cleaned out some apps that I did not recognize and scanned with Malwarebytes with nothing found.  Anything else I can try?  Thanks

You likely got something with a recently installed app. Check your application manager for the names listed below.
From: https://malwaretips.com/blogs/remove-android-virus/

(no guarantees that that site is safe. YMMV)

I've had that issue with multiple android phones and I consider myself a power user. None of the phones were infected with any malicious apps of any sort. The issue isn't your phone but a combination of two things:

1) These articles you're reading are from sites that are serving ads with malicious script. The sites generally don't know this as they sell adspace via vendors such as google adsense. The ads are generally pushing some sort of malicious script to your phone that will hijack certain functions (redirects, constant buzzing, etc).

2) This is a core vulnerability ESPECIALLY with facebook's garbage built in browser. Most browsers piggyback off of general google APIs in the first place so google is partially to blame for even allowing this.


There isn't really a hard solution right now. Google will be solving this with future updates to android. Chrome itself will have a type of adblocker built in soon and will not allow autoplay videos and redirects by default. As far as your phone being secure the play store has had and will continue to receive some security updates on the server side.


Anyways, I wouldn't worry about it. I'm sure it's an option on the s7 as well but my phone is encrypted and most should be by default, it should be in security settings. Other than that your best bet is just to try to manually open the sites up in the browser because I've noticed the facebook built in browser is much  more susceptible to redirects. As I said, it will be an upcoming feature in chrome as well.

Thanks, I'll try this.

Knock on wood, I found an "Android App Data Updater" or something app that wasn't locked in as being essential, uninstalled it and haven't had an issue since.

Thanks everyone.