Google fights scammers with new Chrome security features

Google is rolling out some security changes to the Chrome browser that should make it harder for scammers to take advantage of you.

First, they’re adding protection against accidental or malicious re-directs. Ever been browsing a page and found yourself suddenly somewhere you didn’t want to go? Starting in Chrome 64  all redirects originating from third-parties an infobar instead of redirecting you to the site, unless it’s a site that you have been interacting with.

There will also be a protection against a tactic that redirects your current tab when you open a link in a new tab.

There will also be protections against trickier forms of redirects. Sometimes buttons that look like they perform functions on a site are actually disguised re-directs to third-party websites. For example, what looks like a play button for a video could actually send you somewhere else. And let’s not forget those annoying transparent overlays that you can’t seem to get around to get access the content you want will be blocked.

While many redirects are fairly harmless attempts at advertising, some can take you to sites with malicious content.

To make sure the people running sites know that they have issues, Google is starting an Absusive Experiences Report. Site owners can use the report to see if any of these abusive experiences have been found on their site. 

They’ll have 30 days to address the issue. After that, folks using the internet won’t be able to open new windows or tabs from their site. Hopefully, this won’t cause too many problems with people accessing legitimate redirects, but new security features almost always have a few bugs to work out.