If you are a Spotify Free user, perhaps you should be more careful since users have spotted malicious behavior, SCMagazine reports. According to several users of the free version of the service, ads are serving malware through the advertiser network. More particularly, ads running on Spotify Free automatically open malicious websites, without the users’ permission.
User Tonyonly has shared on the company’s community forum the following experience:
If you have Spotify Free open, it will launch – and keep on launching – the default internet browser on the computer to different kinds of malware / virus sites. Some of them do not even require user action to be able to cause harm.
Luckily, the status of the issue reported by Tonyonly is now “fixed” which means Spotify has identified and fixed the problem, as also visible by their statement:
We’ve identified an issue where a small number of users were experiencing a problem with questionable website pop-ups in their default browsers as a result of an isolated issue with an ad on our Free tier. We have now identified the source of the problem and have shut it down. We will continue to monitor the situation. If you see this issue again, please let us know the exact date and time in this thread.
Spotify encourages their users to report irregularities with their services.
Milena Dimitrova
An inspired writer and content manager who has been with SensorsTechForum since the project started. A professional with 10+ years of experience in creating engaging content. Focused on user privacy and malware development, she strongly believes in a world where cybersecurity plays a central role. If common sense makes no sense, she will be there to take notes. Those notes may later turn into articles! Follow Milena @Milenyim
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