Windows Ad for candy crush saga auto opening the store

[BobbinsPilot]

Hey,

I have noticed that the advert for Candy Crush Saga is opening the store automatically at the end of the video (Windows 10 Pro) and does not reward fuel.

I have done a bit of research into this (watched it over wire shark) and it seems the request to open the store is coming from Vungle, not airport city, again digging deeper, it seems Vungle is used by airport city to serve Ads.

Not happy about this!

 

[pete blake]

Experiencing the same issue.

 

[BobbinsPilot]

OK so done more digging on a virtual machine (it helps being a software developer), if you don't have Candy Crush installed, then the Store is opened and a return code of -214785344 is sent to Vungle, if you do have the Candy Crush Sage app installed, then the store still opens, but the code of 1 is sent to Vungle. So in effect they are using this as a way to detect who has the App installed and who doesn't which is quite interesting because King.com (the owners of the Candy Crush brand) paid Microsoft $4m in 2017 to have Candy Crush Soda Saga pre-provisioned in the windows 10 Creators update!

 

[pete blake]

And here was me just thinking it was some kind of tech glitch when actually its a particularly sneaky way of collecting data from an unsuspecting and unknowing public.

@BobbinsPilot Congratulations on your detective work.

P

 

[BobbinsPilot]

So I have just checked the Airport City game EULA and no one does it state that statistics will be taken that can be used to identify whether or not you have another App installed or not. So under the current GDPR legislation that everyone in the EU, even those providing a solution must adhere too, the law is being broken!