Question stopping unwanted app downloads from malicious ads on a seniors tablet?

[PrinceofRavens]

Long story short my Nana likes to play solitaire, mahjong, and ball sort puzzles on her android tablet and thats essentially all she uses the tablet for. yet every few days i have to go through and remove a bunch of apps that she unknowingly installed from ads. things like new solitare aps from "your app is out of date" ads or so called cleaner apps or virus like 'antivirus' apps from those "your device is infected" ads. when i googled the problem all i get is suggestions to use parental controls in the app store, but every last one of these problematic apps is rated E which the parental controls wont block.

does anyone whos more tech savvy than me have any recommendations? i dont even care if its free or has a fee i just need something that works... this weekly fight with her tablet to stop the endless popup ads some of these malicious apps cause is getting old.

 

[Math Geek]

have you looked for alternative apps that don't have ads?

for instance i use simple solitaire

Simple Solitaire Collection | F-Droid - Free and Open Source Android App Repository

Solitaire game collection with 17 games

f-droid.org

no ads and a bunch of different solitaire styles available. there might be an ad free mahjong as well but i've never looked. have you considered a paid game that is ad free? would be worth a couple bucks to save yourself the trouble.

the ball sort games are prob always gonna be an issue though. played a few myself and never seen one that was not simply an ad delivery service that occasionally let you play a game between ads.

i've never seen a way to block in game ads myself. and not even sure you can lock down the play store so it won't install anything without a password. i know you can disable 3rd party installs but don't think you can remove play store permissions.

 

[PrinceofRavens]

have you looked for alternative apps that don't have ads?

for instance i use simple solitaire

Simple Solitaire Collection | F-Droid - Free and Open Source Android App Repository

Solitaire game collection with 17 games

f-droid.org

no ads and a bunch of different solitaire styles available. there might be an ad free mahjong as well but i've never looked. have you considered a paid game that is ad free? would be worth a couple bucks to save yourself the trouble.

the ball sort games are prob always gonna be an issue though. played a few myself and never seen one that was not simply an ad delivery service that occasionally let you play a game between ads.

i've never seen a way to block in game ads myself. and not even sure you can lock down the play store so it won't install anything without a password. i know you can disable 3rd party installs but don't think you can remove play store permissions.

ill check that one out for her solitare. ive tried to find one before that had an ad free bundle or the like but after two dozen solitare apps with microsofts monthly sub being the only one i found that even gave the option i gave up on that angle.

i dont so much care about the ads showing up from apps, i have no issues with devs making a buck, i just want to prevent any kind of downloads from happening without her having to intentionally and knowingly click "install" in google play at the very minimum. we thought maybe a parental control app but all the ones ive looked into only talk about monitoring activity or limiting time, which is all well and good but not what i need. id rather not go and pay for a bunch just to try and find the one that has this particular feature. ill gladly pay for one that works, just not ones that dont do what i need ya know.

 

[Math Geek]

i can def understand. it's real easy with those ads to at the minimum open the play store.

one option is to look into a guest account on the device. usually this does not allow anything to be installed. kind of like standard vs admin user on windows. you might be able to get it loaded up with the apps, then switch to guest account for her to use day to day.

i've not used one myself but i believe they work this way.