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This article was published on November 6, 2018

Chrome 71 blocks all ads on websites that display too many popups


Chrome 71 blocks all ads on websites that display too many popups

If you hate random popups or fake system warnings on a website, don’t worry – Chrome’s got you covered. The Google-owned browser’s next version, Chrome 71, will block all ads on a website if it provides an “abusive” experience.

Google defines abusive experience as fake messages, phishing, auto-redirect without user action, and unexpected click areas.

Credit: Google

Website owners can keep a track of reported abusive experiences on their sites from a special report page. Google will give them a 30-day window to take corrective action on flagged experiences. After that, it’ll block all the ads on that particular site.

Last year, Google introduced a bunch of tools to prevent automatic redirection, unwanted new tabs, and data capturing click areas. The browser’s product manager Vivek Shekhar said that this approach didn’t work as intended:

However, 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.

These ads trick users into clicking on them by pretending to be system warnings or “close” buttons that do not actually close the ad. Furthermore, of these abusive ad experiences are used by scammers and phishing schemes to steal personal information.

Google added that users will be able to disable the ad filtering through browser settings. Chrome 71, with the new ad-blocking features, will launch in December 2018.

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