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Google Targets Fake "Download" and "Play" Buttons (torrentfreak.com)

Posted by timothy on from the no-mallet-big-enough-for-justice dept.

AmiMoJo writes: Google says it will go to war against the fake 'download' and 'play' buttons that attempt to deceive users on file-sharing and other popular sites. According to a new announcement from the company titled 'No More Deceptive Download Buttons', Google says it will expand its eight-year-old Safe Browsing initiative to target some of the problems highlighted above. 'You may have encountered social engineering in a deceptive download button, or an image ad that falsely claims your system is out of date. Today, we're expanding Safe Browsing protection to protect you from such deceptive embedded content, like social engineering ads,' the company says.

5 of 117 comments (clear)

  1. Re:How would this work? by omnichad · · Score: 3, Informative

    When you visit a web site flagged by Safe Browsing (in Chrome), there's a full screen warning before allowing you to go to the site. They could probably replace the ad image with a similar warning that you have to click through in order to load the ad.

    But it looks like they're just flagging the whole page (see the article linked in the headline - hey, whipslash, we don't want this), letting the site owner take the damage to their reputation for allowing the ads.

  2. Download.com by Not-a-Neg · · Score: 4, Informative

    They can start with Cnet's Download.com, nothing but ad banners with identical looking green "download" buttons.

    --
    -==- Buy a Mac and leave me alone!
    1. Re:Download.com by castionsosa · · Score: 3, Informative

      A while back, it was an excellent source for software... the closest thing Windows ever got to a repository. However when they started bundling foistware [1] with other people's downloads, they changed to yet another site that is not worth visiting.

      [1]: Software that adds browser add-ons and toolbars, then adds a loopback VPN and a trusted root CA into Firefox's keystore is not exactly trustworthy.

  3. Re:How would this work? by Gojira+Shipi-Taro · · Score: 3, Informative

    As well they should. Any site owner that tolerates these deceptive tactics, which are generally also mal-ware vectors, deserves to have their reputations shredded.

    --
    "Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked."; ~ Donald J. Trump
  4. Re:Good by yuhong · · Score: 3, Informative

    SourceForge will likely be fixed, there was another Slashdot story on this.