I have been having this same problem ever since my husband decided to add a Gameboy app. it was from the google play store, not a third party site, but this all started after he installed that. We uninstalled that app, but the problem persists. I have done a factory reset more times than I can count.
- It's not google chrome. Google Chrome does not come installed on this tablet. Doing a factory reset removes Chrome. The problem still exists.
-The browser that came installed with the tablet will redirect me to some sort of "smartdrone.com" every time I open that app. I have reset the homepage. It does not help. I have uninstalled and disabled "Browser." it never goes away because it is the factory installed browser.
- This is not a harmless app. When this first started happening, it started installing apps on my tablet. Apps called "settings" and "sound recorder" that were not the original settings and sound recorder. It would also install games that I did not install. This would happen every time I turned it on, as well as the pop ups. I'd uninstall them. Things would look fine. Restart the tablet, and new apps would appear. Pop ups would get worse and more frequent.
- When I would go into the true "settings" menu, I would have to hit back two or three times to actually back out of it. Since using chrome instead of Browser I have not had this issue. I assume whatever happened, it has embedded itself in my factory installed, irremovable browser.
- Google Chrome does not redirect me to the drone site. I have not had suspicious and unwanted apps install themselves since I stopped using browser and use Chrome instead. However, I still get the pop ups, usually resembling facebook (I too have NEVER installed facebook on this tablet, nor have I even visited facebook.com). I am afraid to go to any sensitive sites, as I have no idea if it is feeding information somewhere.
I have tried and tried to find an answer to this problem. Factory Reset doesn't work. Uninstalling apps doesn't work. This is the first google search in a month that has even asked the question I am trying to find the answer to.
One last thought. My husband also installed this Gameboy app on his smartphone. He got this malware virus thing on his phone. But he did a factory reset on the phone, and it works fine. Perhaps this is a problem that won't go away from my tablet because it's an older version of Android. I cannot install the latest one because it says my tablet was not compatible with it.
This was a gift, and I would rather not just toss it in the garbage. But I am beginning to have no choice. I'll try almost anything at this point.