

You’re tossing and turning trying to get those last few bits of sleep before the long day ahead when suddenly your Android lights up with that familiar tone. You rush to check it but instead of a joyful text message you find yourself staring at an advertisement for a brand new flavor of soda. You shriek in terror hoping your screams wake you from the horror when you realize you’ve already stopped dreaming!

While it has been rumored and feared practically since the operating system’s creation, one of the nightmare scenarios for some unlucky Android users has finally become very real. Japan’s second largest mobile carrier, KDDI, has gone where no carrier has dared before and has begun disguising advertisements as system notifications on their Android devices.

It seems that an app bundled with KDDI devices is the cause of the controversial ad system. The “au one market” is a secondary market application that comes with most of the smartphones on the carrier’s service. This newest evil addition came in the form of an update which prompted the user with two warnings:

1. au one Market app stays resident even when you are not using the app

2. notification space will be used to inform good deals to customers.

There are similar ad experiences from certain applications and services already in the U.S. but this is the first time we’ve seen this behavior from an actual mobile carrier. It’s scary to think of this becoming common place so be sure to voice your opposition on this sort of guerrilla advertising to your carrier representatives before it’s too late. This is also just all the more reason to keep your rootz skills as up to date as possible. Removing that carrier bloatware is becoming seemingly more and more essential these days….]]>