So since Pokemon Go launched back in the summer there have been many reports of the app getting stuck on the loading screen on android. Many sites have reported the problem to being overloaded login servers and other bugs in the app.

Many of you will be familiar with the following loading screen.

Many sites have suggested clearing cache, Restarting, or even reinstalling the app. None of the solutions are working for me.

I decided to investigate what was going wrong further. I did notice that the web browser was also getting adverts appearing randomly from time to time and clearly this is not correct. Despite some virus checkers giving the tablet the all clear I was very suspicious about a number of apps that I saw running and was not able to stop. One of these apps was called broservice, After managing to force quit and uninstall this App things started to get better for a start the web browser no longer displayed adverts and suddenly Pokémon GO was able to sign in. After some more investigation and removal of some other apps The entire tablet was more responsive and Pokémon GO continue to sign in without issue. 

My working theory is that the malware was injecting ads directly into the HTTP traffic and this was interfering with Pokémon Go’s login. So as soon as the malware was removed everything returned to normal.

The worst thing about this problem is that the malware was factory installed on this tablet. The tablet in question was a hipstreet electron and various apps designed to serve adverts and God knows what else were pre-installed and made very difficult to remove.