8

What is this type of notification called and how can I block these?

                                          alt

"MTS" is the name of the carrier. The messages are all ads. I've never seen one of these in the UK, but I receive one every 20 minutes in Ukraine. I've not installed anything recently, I only swapped SIM cards.

user48171
  • 81
  • 1
  • 1
  • 2
  • I'm not 100% sure but they may be sending it via Cell Broadcast. To access the menu, head into Settings>Wireless & networks>Cell broadcasts and try turning it off. If it is already off, try https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.denper.addonsdetector&hl=en addons manager app will tell you what has access to what and what can send you notifications. Failing that, come back here and we'll see what else can be done. – RossC Dec 12 '13 at 09:12
  • 1
    Also there is a setting in the SMS application called 'Push Messages' that are from the network. Disable this also. – RossC Dec 12 '13 at 14:38
  • How did you get on? Did it work? – RossC Dec 13 '13 at 16:18
  • what does the message say ? – kmonsoor Dec 17 '13 at 20:54
  • Hello from 2018, did you find a solution yet? My carrier send offers and it is annoying, I disabled everything I can and the pop-up still showing up. – Ahmed Hamdy Jun 15 '18 at 12:46

1 Answers1

2

I have since found that this is neither a push message nor a cell broadcast. I disabled both, yet still received these. One of the two was already disabled by default, can't remember which.

Apparently by inserting the SIM card, I got an "app" called "MTS Menu". This is the app that shows the messages. Using App Master, I found that this app comes from /system/app/Stk.apk:

                                                enter image description here

"STK" appears to stand for SIM Application Toolkit, basically a feature of SIM cards that enables operators to bundle "value added services", aka bundleware/crapware.

It is really stupid that Android comes not only with this feature enabled, but also makes the source of these pop-ups very difficult to trace.

user48520
  • 21
  • 1