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Bing has been serving up malicious Google Chrome ads for months

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Re: Bing has been serving up malicious Google Chrome ads for months

#71
post #4

This has been happening for so long that it's hard to believe Microsoft is not aware of it.

I'm sure they're aware of it and 'intend' to fix it, but given the often consumer-hostile tactics MSFT is fond of using to shove Bing, Edge, and other products down users' throats, and the fact that this issue, in its current form, happens to align with those goals, I wouldn't be surprised to learn it's not being treated as high priority.

Re: Bing has been serving up malicious Google Chrome ads for months

#72
post #39

The title of this article is deceptive clickbait.[1] The problem has nothing to do with the Edge browser, it has to do with search results returned by Bing, which happens to be Edge's default search engine. If you have a new Windows 10 PC and want to download Chrome, how else could you do it besides "using Microsoft Edge to download Chrome"? So "stop using Edge to download Chrome" is not useful advice. Better advice…

Ok, we've changed the title to the subtitle.

I suspect that as a general matter, headlines are attention-catching gimmicks and subtitles are more likely to proper titles for an article.

Re: Bing has been serving up malicious Google Chrome ads for months

#73
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if you don't eat with filthy hands, you'll be putting antibiotic content creators out of business!

Also your immune system - which might be a bit of an issue.

This metaphor is actually quite apt. If you aren’t accustomed to mentally filtering out ads from content, you may be more likely to be swayed by sponsored content and the like.

Re: Bing has been serving up malicious Google Chrome ads for months

#74
post #22

The title of this article is deceptive clickbait.[1] The problem has nothing to do with the Edge browser, it has to do with search results returned by Bing, which happens to be Edge's default search engine. If you have a new Windows 10 PC and want to download Chrome, how else could you do it besides "using Microsoft Edge to download Chrome"? So "stop using Edge to download Chrome" is not useful advice. Better advice…

> The problem has nothing to do with the Edge browser, it has to do with search results returned by Bing, which happens to be Edge's default search engine. I think you're slicing this too thinly. This has everything to do with Edge, which is purposely configured to use a search engine that creates a liability for users. I would agree that "stop using Edge to download Chrome" is not useful and probably clickbait-y. A…

Microsoft could just as well ship Firefox with Bing as the default search. The problem is Bing.

Re: Bing has been serving up malicious Google Chrome ads for months

#75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you have a new Windows 10 PC and want to download Chrome, how else could you do it besides "using Microsoft Edge to download Chrome"? Simply visit Google.com, Gmail, Youtube or any other Google-site and await the Chrome-spam 100% guaranteed to appear in any browser not Chrome. My favorite one: “Upgrade your browser”. Not misleading at all, eh? How about “no”?

This is a tangent/pile-on, but this is not the only dark pattern google engages in. I absolutely do not want YouTube Red. Any software that respects the user would let you dismiss the offer with an option for “do not ask me again.” And yet, because the software is not respecting the user, YouTube asks me ad nauseum if I want to upgrade to YouTube Red. No. I do not. But I don’t get an option for no. There is something…

Ad-supported software has ads. No liking the ads and refusing to pay for the product isn't a grand moral stand.

Re: Bing has been serving up malicious Google Chrome ads for months

#76
post #73
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also your immune system - which might be a bit of an issue.

This metaphor is actually quite apt. If you aren’t accustomed to mentally filtering out ads from content, you may be more likely to be swayed by sponsored content and the like.

Sure, but in this particular metaphor, we don't sterilize our environment, but still wash our hands on a regular basis.

Re: Bing has been serving up malicious Google Chrome ads for months

#77
post #73
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also your immune system - which might be a bit of an issue.

This metaphor is actually quite apt. If you aren’t accustomed to mentally filtering out ads from content, you may be more likely to be swayed by sponsored content and the like.

Sponsored content isn't the main problem here. All content is opininates. The problem is anonymous 3rd party malware running on a site.

Re: Bing has been serving up malicious Google Chrome ads for months

#78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

chromium-browser is the one. Although on Ubuntu it's in the Universe repository, so you have to add the chromium-team ppa in order to get on-time updates. I will admit that Chrome/Chromium is one of the few things you can't easily get from the repos, on Ubuntu at least.

So how does that prevent a malicious PPA or repo that the attacker could push up in the search rankings? Just like the attacker here pushed up a malicious download page in the search rankings?

It doesn't in this case, however you can determine that the chromium-team ppa is the official one in Ubuntu by following links from the Chromium website.

The security of the package repository system falls down when people add apt signing keys that are untrusted/unverified, which is what happens when you add a ppa in Ubuntu.

Re: Bing has been serving up malicious Google Chrome ads for months

#79
post #73
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also your immune system - which might be a bit of an issue.

This metaphor is actually quite apt. If you aren’t accustomed to mentally filtering out ads from content, you may be more likely to be swayed by sponsored content and the like.

In my experience, whenever I browse without an ad blocker (e.g., someone else's computer), the flurry of intrusive ads shocks me out of information-absorption mode, and just prompts me to think about how best to suggest to the computer owner that they use an ad blocker.

Re: Bing has been serving up malicious Google Chrome ads for months

#80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Debian prioritizes being open source over being user friendly. Googling debian google chrome results in instructions for getting chrome on debian. I have 3 different distros installed on 3 different computers. Chrome is listed on all app searches.

> Googling debian google chrome results in instructions for getting chrome on debian. Yes. I know. I'm not picking on debian specifically here, fedora's dnf doesn't help you install chrome either. My point is rather the following: The GP asserts that the way to find (and subsequently install) software is "apt search `software`" and that way breaks down on exactly the piece of software that the article is about. You h…

GP's solution is valid for the majority of software - at least the sort of software that us HN folk probably use.

Unfortunately Google Chrome is a bad example here as it's not available in most repos (since it's closed source).

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