Cost Of Being Free: Spotify Free Users Get Hit By Malicious Ads Campaign [VIDEO]

Spotify's free tier has been a great aid to the company's profits. It not only attracts users who use the streaming service for free but also help the company earn money by showing advertisements. Recently, a large number of Spotify free tier users have complained that the advertisements are malicious in nature.

Spotify Free users have been complaining that they have been receiving malware-infested ads. The problem was first reported as a community post on the streaming company's forum, which was later picked up by The Next Web.

PSA: uninstall Spotify free, their ads are plagued with malware right now. pic.twitter.com/DUOqDrnDUZ

— Volp (@VolpRS) October 5, 2016

What are the Malicious Ads?

According to the Business Insider, the community post had received more than 100 votes and about 200 comments from users experiencing the same problem. The Complaints are regarding ads on Spotify's desktop version that have been launching malicious websites in the Users web browsers.

The websites have been reported to feature phishing scams and open up randomly in their browsers. Experts believe that a reason may be that the pop-ups in the Application have been inserted with a script that opens the harmful sites automatically in web browsers.

This isn't the first time?

According to UberGizmo, the company had issued an apology earlier in 2011 following the discovery of an ad that contained a virus. This ad too like this new malware didn't need to be clicked on. There are other companies also which have been affected by the same problem. AOL.com, MSN.com, BBC.com, NYTimes.com and other publishers were displaying similar malicious ads earlier in March.

What Steps have been taken?

The Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG) is one example of the steps these companies have taken measures to combat these malwares. Of course, the Users are expected to have antivirus software installed on their computers.

Spotify's officials said earlier that they are currently investigating the matter. It is however unclear what steps users should take to prevent the malwares from attacking their computers. As has been mentioned earlier, Spotify's ads have been hijacked earlier as well to serve malwares to the users' computer. Well, we can still hope that Spotify can fix this problem, as being affected twice by the same problem decreases users' confidence.