Preventing "accidental" app downloads?

[Mooncatt]

My mother-in-law recently got a new Galaxy Core Prime. She's not technically savvy, but this is her second smartphone. I was helping her install an OTA update last night when I noticed it giving an error that not enough space was available. Turns out she had a ton of a apps installed, mostly games and flashlight apps, and she didn't recognize them. I was able to uninstall enough to do the update, but now looking at ways to prevent unwanted installs.

I did make sure to disable DT Ignite, which was active but not sure if that's where the installs were coming from (doubt it, but I disable it on principle regardless). I'm thinking she, or my daughter that sometimes plays games on it, is clicking on ads that link to other Play Store apps and then downloading them. Most of the apps I removed were the kind you normally see in ads, including Clean Master and its related junk.

I personally don't mind ad supported apps, but this is a case where they are doing more harm than anything because there's no telling what's going to wind up on her phone. Is there a way to block, or at least severely limit app installations even from Play without requiring root? I looked at the parental controls for Play, but they only limit by content rating and wouldn't have blocked any of these apps. Not sure if I want to disable it all together because I think I've read that can cause other issues.

 

[Golfdriver97]

I remember DT Ignite being a culprit for installing junk apps on it's own. Disabling that was probably a smart move. However, I think you are right that there really isn't anything more you can do to prevent unintentional installs.