Hi Mark,

Thank you for contacting us. The in-app advertisement for the the Premium subscription is displayed to keep the possibility of upgrading in the line of sight and on the radar of our customers. However, the ad can be dismissed by tapping the X button. After it has been closed, it won't reappear unless mSecure is forced closed and reopened.

There are a few users who have reported the ad comes back more frequently, but we have tested, retested, I've talked with the developer, and it has been confirmed that the only time the ad will be displayed after it has been closed is if the mSecure app has been force closed. The problem here is that apps can be force closed by iOS, which happens if the device is running out of memory, or if it gets shut down and restarted. In the end, if there are no memory issues, as long as you don't bring up the App Switcher feature in iOS and swipe up to close mSecure, the ad won't be displayed after it's closed, even if the app gets locked.

Hi Michael,

I know the banner is not something you want to see, but it's not something we plan to remove. I'm not sure what's happening on your devices, but we do know the app will not display the ad once it's dismissed unless the app is closed. There is no reason for us to make customers see the ad, as it does no good. More users would be angry and write negative reviews than simply resolve to purchase a subscription when they don't want it. It's not in ours or our customer's best interest to somehow nag them with an ad and then tell them we're not nagging them.

The one thing I can do is assure you whatever is happening is not on purpose. If we designed the ad to get displayed on every launch of the app, I would simply tell you it was designed to work that way. It would do no good at all to lie about the way in which it's designed to function.

Would you be willing to create a screen recording of what you're seeing on you and your wife's devices? This could only be done if no sensitive data is displayed on the main view when mSecure is first opened, but if that's the case, it could be very helpful for us to undestand what's happening if we can see what's happening as you use your phone. If you're willing to do this, I can run you through the process, and then have you send a link to the video via email rather than posting it here in the forum.

Thank you for your feedback and your willingness to help with this Michael! You're the first one to take me up on the offer =)  If you can take the screen recording and send it to "[email protected]." You can add "Attention: Mike" to the subject line, or you can simply respond to this post letting me know you sent it.

When you make the video, it's important to show what happens to make the ad get displayed after you tap the X button to dismiss it in the iOS version of the app. The way it should work is that you dismiss the ad, then open the menu and tap the lock button, then also put the app in the background and let it auto-lock. After it's locked manually or auto-locked, when you open mSecure, the ad should not get displayed. So do both those tests and then show the ad getting displayed after mSecure is unlocked.

@Mark As I mentioned to @Michael, we know for sure the app is not showing the based on any type of timeout. The ad comes back only after the app has been force closed. This is a complex topic, however, because an app can be closed by iOS. I know that most people aren't force closing mSecure manually, but the app still can be force closed for all sorts of reason by the OS. I presume that's what's happening here, but I don't know for sure.

Unfortunately, if there is a bug here, the only way we can fix it is if we are able to reproduce the issue on our devices. On my iPhone and iPad, I have never seen the ad get displayed again, even after a weekend of non-use. 

To be clear, I am not saying you are not telling me the truth. I believe that you are seeing something that doesn't seem to fall in line with how I'm describing the intended functionality. If something is going wrong, I want to figure out what's happening and have the developer fix it. However, until I can get the information needed to help me reproduce what's happening, all I can do is try to get more information as more users report their concerns.

@Mark The problem is, we haven't had anyone send us something showing us what's happening on their devices, so at this time, we can only test, and re-test, audit the code, and make sure everything is functioning properly according to how it's intended to function. If you had steps you use every time to reproduce the issue, and I was able to follow those steps on my device to experience the same problem, the fix would be simple.

A couple of people offered to make screencast to show us what's happening on their devices, but we have yet to receive a video. Videos are fantastic, as they show a lot of what sometimes is not conveyed in writing, but it is more difficult to create.

If you do stumble upon a way to reproduce the ad coming back without being force closed, please let me know. We certainly do not want this part of the app functioning incorrectly, as it is obviously an annoyance to some.

@Michael First, I want to clarify a couple things. We fully understand some do not like the ad at the bottom of the screen, and we also understand why. By now, I'm hoping that you and most others have figured out why it's there, and why, after having multiple 1-star reviews telling us how much users dislike the ad, that it's still present with no plans to remove it.

The only reason an ad like this would stay put is that it is helping us generate revenue for the company. As many comments as you have seen saying the user doesn't like it, there have been far, far more that have responded to the ad and signed up for a subscription. I know that doesn't make it better for you and the others who dislike it, but I know that everyone understands a company has to make money in order to stay in business. I can assure you the ad is having a positive impact on our revenue, and so it at least for now, it will stay in the app.

We as a company do not like to bother our customers with things like an in-app ad. This is the reason we created the ad to only get displayed on fresh startups of the app, that is after it had been force closed. If we are able to isolate an issue causing the ad to function incorrectly, we would handle that like any other bug in the app. We would simply fix it for the next release. However, at this time, I cannot reproduce the issue on my iPhone. The developer has looked over his code for this context multiple times, and there is nothing that should cause the ad to be displayed outside of the app being closed either by the user manually or by iOS in the background. There are no timers firing to make it get displayed every day or 3 times a week or any other period of time.

Since you and @Mark are saying the ad is shown after a longer period of time, I'm not sure the video would be worth creating now that I think about it. The video I was hoping to get would show a short set of reproducible steps I could then use on my device to try and reproduce the problem. It may be that we need to create a logging build to try to figure out what's happening. I'll talk to our developer about this and see what he thinks.

@Michael Thank you for your understanding.

There is one thing I want to clarify here. Our intention is to have the reminder show up infrequently. That was the reason we decided to only have it show up when the app was fully closed and reopened, because most users don't force close the app. In that case, it would only show up if you happened to force close mSecure, if the app was closed in the background, or if the device itself was restarted. It is conceivable that most users don't see the ad for months on end, and we are totally fine with that, because it is not our intention to bother the user with the ad. The problem is, there seems to be a bug that we have not got enough information to kill yet.

I'm going to be talking more with our developer about this over the next week, and I hope we'll have some sort of fix for it in the next release. The main thing I hope everyone can understand is that we do not wish for anyone to be badgered by the ad. It should be getting displayed very infrequently except for in rare cases. And if we can find a bug in this part of the app, we will fix it as we would any bug.