{"id":13184,"date":"2016-10-06T12:11:48","date_gmt":"2016-10-06T16:11:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/?p=13184"},"modified":"2021-03-18T05:30:21","modified_gmt":"2021-03-18T09:30:21","slug":"spotify-malware","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/spotify-malware\/13184\/","title":{"rendered":"Did Spotify serve you malware?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Over the past few days, there has been some chatter surrounding Spotify based on a user\u2019s post in the company\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/community.spotify.com\/t5\/Ongoing-Issues\/Spotify-Free-ads-causes-browser-to-launch-on-malware-virus\/idi-p\/1461222\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\">community forum<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p><em>There\u2019s something pretty alarming going on right now with Spotify Free. This started several hours ago. If you have Spotify Free open, it will launch \u2014 and keep on launching \u2014 the default internet browser on the computer to different kinds of malware \/ virus sites. Some of them do not even require user action to be able to cause harm.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>I have 3 different systems (computers) which are all clean and they are all doing this, all via Spotify \u2014 I am thinking it\u2019s the Ads in Spotify Free. I hope this has been noticed and Spotify staff are fixing it \u2014 fast. But it\u2019s still puzzling something like this can actually happen.<\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately, this was not an isolated incident; it appears the free version of Spotify was sending some questionable browser ads. The company noted in response to the user\u2019s post:<\/p>\n<p><em>We\u2019ve 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. We will continue to monitor the situation. If you see this issue again, please let us know the exact date and time in this thread.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The problem seems to have been fixed now. By the way, some time ago a user mentioned to us on Twitter that he was having similar issue with Spotify, also commenting that his Kaspersky product had saved him from the malware.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Dear <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Spotify?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">@Spotify<\/a>. Thank you for allowing malicious links inside ads. If it weren't for <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/kaspersky?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">@kaspersky<\/a> I'd be fucked now. Fix it would ya!!?<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Menno (@MeMenno) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/MeMenno\/status\/779401620408893440?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">September 23, 2016<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>We\u2019re glad for this user, but we also feel for those who had an unpleasant browsing experience when they were just looking to enjoy some music. This sort of problem is one of many great reasons to have reliable <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/antivirus?icid=gl_kdailyplacehold_acq_ona_smm__onl_b2c_kasperskydaily_wpplaceholder____kav___\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">antivirus<\/a> software. We would recommend looking at <a href=\"https:\/\/kas.pr\/KIS\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Kaspersky Internet Security<\/a> \u2014 the first 30 days are free.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>That free Spotify gave some users malware.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":636,"featured_media":13185,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,2683],"tags":[1251,36,686,1844],"class_list":{"0":"post-13184","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"category-threats","9":"tag-antivirus","10":"tag-malware-2","11":"tag-spotify","12":"tag-spotify-free"},"hreflang":[{"hreflang":"x-default","url":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/spotify-malware\/13184\/"},{"hreflang":"en-us","url":"https:\/\/usa.kaspersky.com\/blog\/spotify-malware\/7755\/"},{"hreflang":"en-gb","url":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.co.uk\/blog\/spotify-malware\/7768\/"},{"hreflang":"es-mx","url":"https:\/\/latam.kaspersky.com\/blog\/spotify-malware\/7809\/"},{"hreflang":"es","url":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.es\/blog\/spotify-malware\/9243\/"},{"hreflang":"it","url":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.it\/blog\/spotify-malware\/9102\/"},{"hreflang":"tr","url":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com.tr\/blog\/spotify-malware\/2490\/"},{"hreflang":"fr","url":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.fr\/blog\/spotify-malware\/6150\/"},{"hreflang":"pt-br","url":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com.br\/blog\/spotify-malware\/6622\/"},{"hreflang":"pl","url":"https:\/\/plblog.kaspersky.com\/spotify-malware\/5489\/"},{"hreflang":"de","url":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.de\/blog\/spotify-malware\/8884\/"},{"hreflang":"ja","url":"https:\/\/blog.kaspersky.co.jp\/spotify-malware\/12801\/"},{"hreflang":"en-au","url":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com.au\/blog\/spotify-malware\/13184\/"},{"hreflang":"en-za","url":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.co.za\/blog\/spotify-malware\/13184\/"}],"acf":[],"banners":"","maintag":{"url":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/tag\/malware-2\/","name":"malware"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/636"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13184"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13184\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39072,"href":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13184\/revisions\/39072"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13185"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}