After previously announcing an increased protection from social engineering attacks – deceptive tactics that try to trick you into doing something dangerous, Google has now announced, that the Safe browsing Feature on Chrome will warn you of those fake “Download Now/Play Now” buttons on webpages as well.
This new feature, which will be an extension to the November-announced social engineering attacks update, embedded content (like ads) on a web page will now also be considered social engineering when they either:
- Pretend to act, or look and feel, like a trusted entity — like your own device or browser, or the website itself.
- Try to trick you into doing something you’d only do for a trusted entity — like sharing a password or calling tech support.
This image claims that your software is out-of-date to trick you into clicking “update”.
This image mimics a dialogue from the FLV software developer — but it does not actually originate from this developer.
These buttons seem like they will produce content that relate to the site (like a TV show or sports video stream) by mimicking the site’s look and feel. They are often not distinguishable from the rest of the page.
Safe Browsing has been a sort of hallmark feature on Chrome, safeguarding users from many potentially dangerous malware injections since 2006, and from unwanted software since last to last year.
Google introduced a major update last year, when it had announced through a blog post that in the coming weeks, UwS detection will be improving drastically on Chrome. Later that year, Google made Safe Browsing, a default for Chrome on Android devices.
The Tech Portal is published by Blue Box Media Private Limited. Our investors have no influence over our reporting. Read our full Ownership and Funding Disclosure →
