Xiaomi smartphone owners often face intrusive ads that appear in the most unexpected places of the operating system.It is not just an annoyance, but also a potential security threat if you accidentally click on a malicious banner. It is especially important for owners of the Redmi Note 9 model to know how to protect their device from such digital noise.
The MIUI system installed in the factory contains built-in mechanisms for displaying advertising content, which are formally called “recommendations.” However, the functionality of blocking unwanted calls and messages also requires fine-tuning to avoid missing an important call from a bank or courier.
We’ll look at both standard system features and additional security techniques to help you make the Redmi Note 9 as comfortable as possible, learn how to distinguish between system advertising and real spam, and understand which settings are critical to your privacy.
Differences Between MIUI Advertising and Phone Spam
The first step to clean interfaces is to understand the nature of the stimuli, which many users confuse with incoming spam from scammers, two different attack vectors that require different approaches to elimination.
In-UI advertising is a manufacturer's marketing tool built into system applications like Explorer, Cleanup, or Music, and it appears when you open folders or complete a security scan, and you can only turn it off through the hidden privacy settings in the relevant sections.
Phone spam is incoming calls and SMS from unknown numbers offering credits or services. Redmi Note 9 uses a built-in call filter that relies on updated databases to combat them, and it is important not to confuse these concepts, since disabling one does not eliminate the other.
⚠️ Warning: Disabling system advertising services may cause some standard applications to malfunction MIUI, such as “Downloading” or “Subjects».
Understanding this difference allows you to do a point-by-point thing: you can keep the call filter active, but you can remove the visual noise from the smartphone menu completely, and this approach strikes a balance between clean interface and functional security.
Configure the built-in call filter and SMS
At the heart of the protection against unwanted calls is the Security app preinstalled on the Redmi Note 9, where the main tools for managing incoming traffic are concentrated, and accessed through the central control panel of the system.
To get started, you need to activate a database of spam numbers, and the system automatically updates the lists of scammers and telemarketers, blocking their calls before your phone starts ringing, saving time and nerves.
You can select the level of aggressiveness of the lock from the filter settings menu, you can disallow calls from hidden numbers or numbers that are not in your phone book, which is especially true for those who rarely wait for calls from unknown people.
☑️ Setting up the call filter
Filtration deserves special attention. SMS-Algorithms, messages. MIUI They can analyze text messages and label them as spam if they contain keywords like “credit”, “win” or “promotion”, and the tagged messages are not lost, but are sent to a separate folder, where they can be restored if necessary.
Disabling system advertising in applications
Once you've set up your calls, you should clean the interface of the advertising banners, which requires you to consistently go through the main system utilities. In Redmi Note 9, ads are built into every standard application, and you need to disable them separately everywhere.
Start with a global recommendation switch, which is deep in security settings and passwords, and activating this setting significantly reduces the number of intrusive sentences, although it doesn't completely remove them from all corners of the system.
Next, you need to visit the Explorer app, which often hides the "Receive recommendations" option in its settings, which is responsible for the news feed and banner ads on the file manager's home screen, and disabling this item makes the file work cleaner.
Remember the Cleaner app, which, after each scan, can show ads for games or apps, and to remove that, look for the setup gear inside the app and uncheck the "Get recommendations" box.
| Annex | The path to adjustment | Parameter for deactivation | The effect |
|---|---|---|---|
| Security | Settings (cogs) | Receive recommendations | Remove banners in the main menu |
| Conductor | Settings → About the annex | Recommendations | Clean file interface |
| Topics | Profile → Settings | Showing ads | No pop-ups. |
| Downloads. | Three points → Settings | Showing recommended | Lack of news downstairs |
Hidden Advertising Settings
Blocking ads in the browser and notifications
Often, spam is not generated by system services, but by permissions that the user gives to sites. Android-based browsers allow sites to send push notifications that look like system messages.
To stop this flow, you need to go to your browser settings (standard or Chrome), find the Privacy section or Site Settings section, and there will be a list of permissions for notifications, and ruthlessly remove any suspicious sites from the list of allowed sites.
And also, an effective method is to use DNS with ad-blocking, which is a system solution that works for all applications at once. You don't need to install programs, just change one digital network setting.
Go to Settings → Connection and Sharing → Private DNS. In the “DNS Provider Host Name” field, type in the dns.adguard.com address. Once saved, the phone may need to reboot, but the result is worth it: most ad trackers will stop loading.
⚠️ Attention: Use of third-party DNS-servers may slightly reduce the network response rate in rare cases if the server is overloaded.
Use of third-party applications for protection
Xiaomi’s regular funds are sometimes not enough to fight sophisticated spam, and in such cases, specialized Google Play apps come to the rescue, using more advanced analytics algorithms and cloud databases.
One of the leaders in this field is the Truecaller app, which not only identifies the caller, but also automatically drops calls from spammers, but it's worth remembering that it requires access to your phone book to work, that raises privacy questions.
A safer alternative is Kaspersky Who Calls or Yandex.With a number detector, which has a good local base and is less aggressive in data collection, and effectively filters SMS and calls by integrating into the Redmi Note 9 call system.
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When installing a number detector, be sure to check access rights. If the application requires access to SMS and contacts without an obvious need, it is better to choose an analogue with a stricter privacy policy.
Frequent problems and their solution
Even after careful setup, users may find that ads are returning or spam calls continue to arrive, most often due to a system update or application settings reset.
If you have re-advertised after the MIUI update, check the Passwords & Security section → Access to Personal Data section, where the Get References button, which the system sometimes turns on by default in major updates, can be activated.
If spam calls come from different numbers (spoofing), no database can help 100%, and in such a situation, the method is Do Not Disturb mode with a whitelist setting, which only includes contacts of relatives and colleagues.
Sometimes users complain that they can not find the settings in the specified places, this may be due to the firmware region (Global, EU, Russia), in Russian firmware, some items may be called differently or moved to the section "Advanced settings".
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Regularly checking your privacy settings after each system update is the only way to ensure that ads won’t return to your Redmi Note 9.