Unwanted Pop-Up Ads Appearing on Square Online Site

[1122creative]

The title of this thread has been edited from the original: Help! We are having a serious issue with pop-up ads!

We are putting a request out to the Square Community for anyone who might be able to help us. Yes, we are getting desperate for an answer and a solution. If you can help, please advise us on what is happening. To see it for yourself:

1. Please visit our online store.
2. Click on any of our store's graphical or text links while you are there.
3. Let us know if you see a strange pop-up ad appearing, inappropriate or otherwise.

This has become a serious issue for our customers. Square's Support has yet to respond to our support request on this issue, which you can read about here. Has anyone else been having this experience with your online store? Does anyone know where these pop-up ads are coming from? How do we get rid of them?

As always, any help or advice you can offer will be most appreciated.

@kristen @seraphimshop @MayaP 

[1122creative]

We have a serious issue that is affecting our store's integrity, customer loyalty, and customer experience. If anyone has any advice on this, we would really appreciate it. It's driving us crazy and causing a lot of problems for our online store identity. This is the email I sent to Square Support recently:

Subject: Urgent Complaint: Inappropriate Pop-Up Ads Displayed on Our Square Online Store

Dear Square Support Team,

We are writing to report a serious and deeply concerning incident that occurred on our Square Online Store, located at 1122CreativeDesign.com.

Two of our long-standing customers contacted us today to report that graphic pornographic pop-up ads appeared while visiting our online store. These ads were explicit, invasive, and entirely inappropriate, appearing directly in front of our store content. This is unacceptable for any business, but especially for a brand like ours that serves professional crafters, artists, and families.

We have already contacted Goaffpro, the affiliate marketing app we currently use, to investigate whether their integration could be responsible. They have denied any involvement. However, since Square hosts our online store and provides the primary framework for all embedded scripts and third-party integrations, we are formally requesting that your technical and security teams immediately investigate this issue.

Specifically, we need Square to:

1. Conduct a full security audit of our store and confirm whether any malicious scripts, injected code, or compromised third-party connections are responsible for the ads.

2. Review all current integrations on our site to determine if there are vulnerabilities in how external apps (like Goaffpro) interact with Square’s platform.

3. Provide an official explanation and assurance that Square’s online store infrastructure is secure and that this type of inappropriate advertising will not occur again.

We take this issue extremely seriously. It damages not only our reputation but also the trust our customers place in us — trust that we have built carefully over years.

If this problem is not identified and resolved promptly, we will have no choice but to reconsider maintaining our store with Square and explore alternative e-commerce platforms that can guarantee a safer, ad-free shopping experience for our customers.

Should this matter remain unresolved, we will also be escalating our complaint to Square’s Trust & Safety Department and, if necessary, filing formal reports with consumer protection agencies and online commerce watchdogs to ensure this type of issue receives the attention it warrants.

Please treat this matter as urgent and escalate it to your technical security division for immediate review. We expect a prompt and detailed response outlining the actions being taken to investigate and prevent this issue from recurring.

Sincerely,
[Personal Information Redacted]
Owners, 11:22 Creative Design

[Katie_SQ · Accepted solution]

Hi @1122creative,

Thank you for reaching out to us about this. I've gone ahead and merged your existing post to this thread so that we can track all of your feedback for this issue in one place. 

I've taken a look at your site, and I'm not able to see any unwanted pop-up ads appearing on my end. The unwanted pop-ups you've described here are not native to Square Online, but rather would be caused by third-party embed code or tracking tools that have been added to your site. 

The best way to resolve this is by identifying and removing the external code causing these pop-ups, as Square cannot directly modify third-party elements. Here are the steps I recommend taking immediately:

Review and Remove Custom Tracking Code:

- Sign in to your Square Dashboard and go to Online > Online Store > Settings > Tracking Tools
- Remove any custom tracking scripts you've added to see if the pop-ups stop

Check Embedded Code on Your Site Editor:

- On your Square Dashboard, go to Online > Online Store > Website > Edit Site
- Look for any embed code sections on each page
- Remove these elements to see if the pop-ups stop

- If you've added any embed links to text, please remove these also to see if the pop-ups stop

Audit Third-Party Integrations:

- On your Square Dashboard, go to Settings > App Integrations

- Review all third-party apps and integrations
- Temporarily disable any integrations for Square Online tracking tools or custom code to identify which might be causing the issue

Publish Your Website
- To make sure your changes are pushed through, on your Square Dashboard, go to Online > Online Store > Website > Edit Site and click the Publish button to republish your site again after each element is eliminated to help narrow down the root cause

Clear Your Browser's Cache 
- Clear your web browser's cache, or try viewing your website in an incognito/private browsing window to see if the pop-ups are still visible 

By methodically following these troubleshooting steps, you should be able to pinpoint which external element is causing the pop-up ads. Since this issue originates from third-party code rather than Square Online's core functionality, removing the problematic external elements is the key to resolving it.

Please let me know if the pop-ups have disappeared after making these changes.