Google Chrome Will Block Tab-Under Behavior (bleepingcomputer.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Google is working on blocking tab-under behavior in Chrome, according to a document seen by Bleeping Computer. For users unfamiliar with the jargon, Google considers tab-under behavior when an unsuspecting user is scrolling or clicking on a page, but the site duplicates the current page in another tab and shows an ad or a new website in the page the user was initially reading. Countless of website owners and advertisers have abused tab-unders to show ads and redirect users to unwanted sites, all for the sake of ad impressions and redirection fees. This demo site created by Google engineers that shows how tab-unders work. Earlier today, Google published a document detailing three ways it's currently looking at for dealing with tab-unders in Chrome. The current approved proposal is for the browser maker to block websites before opening a new tab, similar to the pop-up blocking mechanism. According to Chrome engineer Charles Harrison, the tab-under blocking feature will be supported on five of the six Blink platforms -- Windows, Mac, Linux, Chrome OS, and Android, but not Android WebView. Once the feature is ready, it will ship with Chrome Canary under its own option on the chrome://flags settings page.

Comments

I've never seen this

[JohnFen]

I've never seen "tab-unders". Thank you, NoScript!

Re:I've never seen this

[JohnFen]

NoScript does a lot more than just block Javascript. It blocks many types of web-based shenanigans, such as cross-site-scripting attacks, clickjacking, etc. And even if we're just talking about blocking Javascript, it is far more flexible than any of the things I've seen built into browsers.

Chrome doesn't come close to being as good. There aren't even any extensions for Chrome that approaches it.