Tech

Spotify ads are giving users viruses

by Jeremy Mersereau

This is about the last thing one of the main combatants in the battle for streaming supremacy wants to hear: users of Spotify’s free tier have noticed that ads on the platform are directing them to malicious websites that automatically try to install viruses.

Users complained on social media as well as taking to Spotify’s community webpage to voice their displeasure:

The problem appears to stem from a single ad on the free tier of the service, which Spotify has since removed from their internal ad rotation after identifying the source of the problem.

“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,” a rep from Spotify said.

With tens of millions of free users across Windows, Mac, and Linux, the malware episode marks a especially worrying lowlight in the course of Spotify’s life …especially since the Swedish company are trying to develop into an entire digital music ecosystem through its major acquisitions. Typically, successful tech ecosystems include very few instances of malware.

[H/T Telegraph]