There have been several reports, including within our own company of 3G users of Ufone seeing pop-under ads, while browsing the web on Ufone 3G. We have verified this from devices that are currently in our possession that clicking on any link while on a website and running Ufone 3G will prompt you to some random ad which you can see below:
For now, the issue is on a small scale but is slowly picking up traction on social media outlets. Ufone recently also announced that WhatsApp Calls will be billed separately even if you are on Ufone call package with a data bucket, this is currently a developing story and we are currently reaching out to other people who are using Ufone and 3G services, for now 2 out of 2 Ufone 3G users have both confirmed this issue happening upon opening any link on a website.
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This is quite an odd encounter for us, normally this kind of activity would be if you are being given a free service or similar, but since these customers are paying for their services and are seeing server side ads from Ufone in their web browsing activities, it is simply unacceptable.
We have yet to confirm if this is an intentional or unintentional act from Ufone side. We are in hopes that this is a minor time error and should be over soon. We have reached out to Ufone for a comment on this activity, we will update the story as soon as we hear back anything from them.
How to test if you are affected?
Clear your mobile browser cache, cookies, and history. After which open any website and from there, open a link. If you don’t see anything on 2-3 links, then you are in the clear, for us the pop-under ads would come after opening the first link.
If you are a Ufone 3G customer and are facing this issue, please leave a comment below and do mention your city, browser and the occurrence frequency.
Update
We would like to credit Kamran Zubairy, for his insightful post on May 30th. In the post, he highlights how Ufone internet exploits a Google Analytics script to force an ad open for the user.
