MS Edge plays audio ads even when none of the tabs have sites open with ads on them

Hi sir

same problem on my laptop, MS Edge plays audio ads even when none of the tabs have sites open with ads on them

almost 3hrs i found solution.

Open Task manager > Background Process > Find "zbrain_dekstop" > Right Click "end task" > Right Click again " Open file location" > Delete > zbrain_desktop. no more automatic play audio. Restart.

zbrain_desktop have malware "W64.AIDetectMalware"

VirusTotal - File - 733a7416f4c35927d4d652f320d35e9e8cfda4c73a7432a7b47723b4115fe542

Update: Uninstalling Youtube from the sidebar has had no effect. The background api call still seems to happen at regular intervals. The issue occurred twice today even after removing youtube from the sidebar.

I think at some point I will clear all cookies and try. But how is it that Edge is allowing background api calls even when the site is not running? Isn't this a privacybreach?

Same Problem. THe issue I found (for my system anyway) was the ads where playing MS Edge Webview2. I have tried muting it, I have tried uninstalling it, I have tried blocking it, however everytime the system restarts it refreshes to defaults, meaning it is no longer blocked or muted, and if I had uninstalled it, it re-installs. It acts JUST LIKE Malware.

Very shady imo.

Thanks, this needs to be Pinned.

Hi sir

same problem on my laptop, MS Edge plays audio ads even when none of the tabs have sites open with ads on them

almost 3hrs i found solution.

Open Task manager > Background Process > Find "zbrain_dekstop" > Right Click "end task" > Right Click again " Open file location" > Delete > zbrain_desktop. no more automatic play audio. Restart.

zbrain_desktop have malware "W64.AIDetectMalware"

VirusTotal - File - 733a7416f4c35927d4d652f320d35e9e8cfda4c73a7432a7b47723b4115fe542

Those are not blogs. These are journal websites and not blogs that run ads. That's the whole reason why I reported this issue. My suspicion is Edge is running some script in the cache on a timely basis. I ran fiddler and found that there was traffic going to youtube even when youtube wasn't running within the browser at that point.

Youtube is present in the Edge Sidebar, but at no point have I been using it. It looks like the sidebar makes requests even when the app is not being used and this is inadvertently fetching an ad to be played. I'm no expert in web, but I see a header "X-YouTube-Ad-" in the request.

On the one hand the youtube app shouldn't be loading ads when the app is not active. That's a youtube issue. But on the other hand, Edge shouldn't be making these background calls. I don't know the terms and conditions of service. I'm going to disable the app in the first place.

Here's the Fiddler Raw data

**POST https://m.youtube.com/api/stats/qoe?**fmt=18&cpn=IATwhaJPfXTMiX4U&el=detailpage&ns=yt&fexp=23858057%2C23983296%2C24004644%2C24007246%2C24080738%2C24135310%2C24169501%2C24208765%2C24219382%2C24255165%2C24288346%2C24415864%2C24439361%2C24450367%2C24451438%2C24468691%2C24474986%2C24482081%2C24490426%2C24499534%2C24499792%2C24516156%2C24539775%2C39323074&cl=524526076&seq=16&docid=C7cSiSWQd5g&ei=g4o-ZKzyD8-twgPnvLvYBg&event=streamingstats&plid=AAX5m00KB12iDTHl&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fm.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DC7cSiSWQd5g%26app%3Dm&sdetail=p%3Am.youtube.com%2Fwatch&sourceid=r&cbr=Chrome&cbrver=112.0.0.0&c=MWEB&cver=2.20230412.07.00&cplayer=UNIPLAYER&cos=Windows&cosver=10.0&cplatform=MOBILE&vps=410.929:PL&bat=410.929:0.23:0&cmt=410.929:39.940&bh=410.929:35.143 HTTP/1.1

Host: m.youtube.com

Connection: keep-alive

Content-Length: 226

sec-ch-ua: "Chromium";v="112", "Google Chrome";v="112", "Not:A-Brand";v="99"

X-YouTube-Ad-Device: cbr=Chrome&cbrver=112.0.0.0&ceng=WebKit&cengver=537.36&cos=Windows&cosver=10.0&cplatform=DESKTOP

X-YouTube-Page-Label: youtube.mobile.web.client_20230412_07_RC00

sec-ch-ua-mobile: ?0

User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/112.0.0.0 Safari/537.36

Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded

X-YouTube-Page-CL: 523872044

X-YouTube-Utc-Offset: 330

X-YouTube-Client-Name: 2

X-YouTube-Client-Version: 2.20230412.07.00

X-Youtube-Identity-Token: QUFFLUhqbkp4bjhmenFLdUxWQktPNXZ5ajdIb28xSm5UUXw=

X-YouTube-Time-Zone: Asia/Calcutta

X-Goog-Visitor-Id: CgtES192Qjh4MnlUdyiDlfqhBg%3D%3D

sec-ch-ua-platform: "Windows"

Accept: */*

Origin: https://m.youtube.com

Sec-Fetch-Site: same-origin

Sec-Fetch-Mode: cors

Sec-Fetch-Dest: empty

Referer: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=C7cSiSWQd5g&app=m

Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate, br

Accept-Language: en-GB,en;q=0.9,en-US;q=0.8