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No More Deceptive Download Buttons

googleonlinesecurity.blogspot.com

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Re: No More Deceptive Download Buttons

#61

Post by throwaway7767 »

afandian wrote: post #48
danr4 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. I mean the companies whose sole business is to get you to download bundled malware, change your search engine, push ads to every site you browse using extensions etc. Source: I've worked at one of those.

Surely the companies that advertise via Google to try and deceive you to into clicking their download button or whatever fit the bill? And surely Google, by actively enabling them, is also part of the process. As stated elsewhere on this thread, if they can detect deceptive sites, they can detect deceptive adverts.

So they implement detection, and remove these ads. The scummy advertisers then permutate their ads until they get past the detection and the game continues.

We're getting pretty good at image classification, but I don't think that extends to maliciously crafted inputs.

Re: No More Deceptive Download Buttons

#62

Post by Piskvorrr »

fixermark wrote: post #52
sergiotapia wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Me too man, I remember the internet back then where everything was unique and not a cookie-cutter bootstrap boilterplate. Want a nostalgia trip? Download Opera (one of the early versions) - it'll pluck at your heart strings and make you yearn for times when you had more personal responsibility and Google wasn't there to infect everything with it's nanny browser. Hell, even Firefox the last bastion of Freedom on the w…

Mostly because there's more benefit to be gained in making the web usable by non-experts than in preserving the current status quo. There's a reason the Wild West didn't stay wild.

This. More specifically, the Wild West got wild for a few years - during a massive population influx - while the entire system was unstable (which also means interesting, in most senses of the word). The metaphor leaks, but is close enough.

Re: No More Deceptive Download Buttons

#63

Post by kbart »

It's a laudable initiative to protect average Joe from himself, but I don't feel like Google (or any other company) deciding for me what is dangerous. They should at least provide this feature as an opt-out option. Still, better option would be to educate more people of ad and script blockers.

Re: No More Deceptive Download Buttons

#64

Post by tdkl »

Piskvorrr wrote: post #59
tdkl wrote: post #23

I hope they'll include a "Stop the nanny" flag in chrome://flags as well. I mean you can't even change the new tab page to a custom .html, without Chrome nagging you at every launch if the settings are correct. If you make a manifest.json and load as an unpacked extension, it will moan about that. FFS, I know what you're trying to do with Joe/Jane Noob, but at least give me something to skip that if I know what I'm d…

At least theoretically, it should be possible to build Chrom ium with such customizations; you'll lose the benefits of the Google walled garden, but you'll gain a bit of user freedom as well (probably won't be point-and-click, alas).

Sadly Chrome sync is one of the major thing that keeps me on Chrome, it just works and syncs everything.

Re: No More Deceptive Download Buttons

#65

Post by afandian »

throwaway7767 wrote: post #61
afandian wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely the companies that advertise via Google to try and deceive you to into clicking their download button or whatever fit the bill? And surely Google, by actively enabling them, is also part of the process. As stated elsewhere on this thread, if they can detect deceptive sites, they can detect deceptive adverts.

So they implement detection, and remove these ads. The scummy advertisers then permutate their ads until they get past the detection and the game continues. We're getting pretty good at image classification, but I don't think that extends to maliciously crafted inputs.

That or they manually verify each ad submission. If that violates their business model of high-volume low-value automated processes (and it obviously does) then you have to take account of that when decide how you view company. Automation and the inability to verify at the scale that they operate doesn't somehow absolve them.

Re: No More Deceptive Download Buttons

#66

Post by sergiotapia »

fixermark wrote: post #52
sergiotapia wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Me too man, I remember the internet back then where everything was unique and not a cookie-cutter bootstrap boilterplate. Want a nostalgia trip? Download Opera (one of the early versions) - it'll pluck at your heart strings and make you yearn for times when you had more personal responsibility and Google wasn't there to infect everything with it's nanny browser. Hell, even Firefox the last bastion of Freedom on the w…

Mostly because there's more benefit to be gained in making the web usable by non-experts than in preserving the current status quo. There's a reason the Wild West didn't stay wild.

I agree, but it still sucks that it seems you're being sold something at every turn. Websites are no longer there, just to be there. It's always about the upsell or agenda.

Re: No More Deceptive Download Buttons

#67

Post by joosters »

So safe browsing is now blocking pages where the adverts are "often not distinguishable from the rest of the page"?

IMO that covers all of Google's search result pages. Most users don't seem to realise that the top results are paid advertising...

Re: No More Deceptive Download Buttons

#68

Post by FussyZeus »

developer2 wrote: post #20
lexicality wrote: post #2

Perhaps now that Google has taken steps to block websites that display these ads, Google should take steps to stop accepting these ads onto their network in the first place. Most of the time when I see those DOWNLOAD/PLAY buttons, they're hosted on doubleclick.

I'm not at all against this move from Google - it is good sense. However, to play Devil's advocate, what are the odds this was pushed down by the MPAA/RIAA or similar? This policy more or less directly targets sites that offer free online streaming or torrent downloads of Movies/TV/Music. The sites that wind up with these deceptive ads are typically sites that provide copyrighted content to their users. Again, this i…

Actually when I saw the headline my first thought was sourceforge. You expect these kinds of deep web ads when perusing sites you know damn well are "less than legal" but I've seen them on a number of websites I wouldn't normally expect to, sourceforge being the worst offender in my experience.

Re: No More Deceptive Download Buttons

#69

Post by FussyZeus »

There's an unexpectedly large number of commenters who seem to think that this falls under free speech. Do I need to explain that the crap these ads usually download when clicked is responsible for a ton of support calls, many of which go to innocent kids on weekends just trying to unwind from school? :)

I'm kidding of course but seriously comparing blocking these buttons and deceptive elements is not censorship, it's Google saying to these publishers that if they don't get their shit together, that they will dissuade traffic from visiting their sites. The only way to get the attention of bigger publishing companies is to grab them by the revenue stream, you all know this.

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