Chrome will start to block all advertisements on websites that frequently show harmful or misleading advertisements to visitors. Last year the search giant announced it would protect Chrome users against so-called “abusive experiences” such as phishing sites, unwanted popups, fake messages and redirects.
Websites that provide abuse experiences usually try to convince users to click on a fake play button, or use transparent overlays that catch all clicks after which a new tab or window is opened. Google has been doing its best to block such behavior since the beginning of this year, but now wants to block even more annoyances for Chrome users.
“We've learned since then that this approach did not go far enough. In fact, more than half of these abusive experiences are not blocked by our current set of protections, and nearly all involve harmful or misleading ads,” according to Vivek Sekhar, Product Manager at Google.
Sekhar explains that there are still all kinds of other tricks scammers use to convince users into clicking an advertisement. Known tricks are e.g. fake system warning or close buttons that do not actually close an advertisement. Also, cyber-criminals use such kind of tactics for phishing schemes with the intention to steal personal data.
With the launch of Chrome 71, the browsrr will start to block all advertisements on websites with persistent abusive experiences. Site owners can use a tool provided by Google to check whether their site contains abuse experiences that need to be corrected or removed, after which they have 30 days to fix the issue. If the site owner doesn't act within those 30 days, all ads on the website are automatically blocked.
Chrome 71 is scheduled for release in December this year.
