The hubby and I were super excited to get brand new Samsung Galaxy S3 Android phones recently and went a bit crazy downloading all the free apps we’d been lacking on our old phones. Games, shopping tools, music players, flashlight apps, barcode scanners…you name it we downloaded them!

It didn’t take long before we started to realize that many free apps can be pretty spammy and overly-aggressive with those unwanted ad popups, and it’s hard to know which ones to watch out for. Turns out there’s something called Madware, which is mobile adware hidden in many apps. It only affects Android phones, and even some of the most popular apps out there, including Angry Birds, Brightest Flashlight Free and Sams Club apps to name just a few, contain Madware!

We were pretty happy to learn about a handy tool that helps find and remove Madware apps, called Norton Spot. It’s developed by the same people who make all the other Norton security, privacy protection and web software we’ve all come to trust, and you can download Norton Spot for free, right from Google Play (formerly known as the Android Marketplace).

Norton Spot is an ad blocker, detector, killer and stopper. It also protects your privacy which is something every parent needs to be aware of, too. Once installed, you can count on Norton Spot to identify apps that don’t respect your time or privacy and remove them. It shows you the apps you need to be concerned about along with the suspicious or undesirable behaviors you might not be aware of. If you’ve got an Android phone, and especially if your kiddos do, I recommend you download Norton Spot for free and start using it, too!
[Read more…]