Why are so many websites breaking?

[Stephen]

It seems to be worse on shopping sites.

Are they all hacking each others sites or trying to manage the xmas rush or what?

Eg

ARGOS
pop-up asks if you want to download an app, covering 90% of the screen you are trying to read

MAPLINS
pop-up tells you about Innovations and invites you to send an email (sending an email asking when their website will be fixed elicits no response).

Are these genuine parts of the Argos and Maplins websites, a symptom of the website having been hacked, or a symptom suggesting that my Android needs scrapping?

A common feature is the the pop-up locks on tne screen, with the web-page you a trying to read scrolling around below it.
switching from the Android browser to Opera helps, though that doesnt work for YA.

[Loki]

Well yeah, it's going to be worse on shopping sites, it's near holidays. More specifically, it's near BLACK FRIDAY and with as many pre-BF sales going on, it should come as no surprise that they're being overloaded.

Sounds like you're accessing from a phone, so I'd like to first of all point out that phones have notoriously low processing capabilities, even if you have flawless Wi-Fi. It could also be a problem with your memory.

But no, chances are that hacking doesn't really have anything to do with it. They certainly could be subject to DDOS attacks, but hacking like that is something that is not only unscrupulous, but also traceable, and most low-end businesses wouldn't dare risk something like that. The risk outweighs the reward, simply put. They might gain a few hundred extra customers if they succeeded, but if they were caught, they could lose everything.

My suggestion is to check your phone's cache and see about clearing some old information off of your phone. If that doesn't work, try giving your network company a call. Last but not least, remember, this season is a ridiculously crazy one, so you have to expect some lag and some down time.

Now as per your problem with pop-ups, there isn't a lot to help with that on the phone. The best you can do is see about installing some sort of pop-up blocker add on, checking to see if your phone has a setting to disallow pop-ups in general, or just deal with it =/