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Bing has been serving up malicious Google Chrome ads for months

forbes.com

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

#211

Post by ocdtrekkie »

utopcell wrote: post #191
adanto6840 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely they're doing some verification to ensure that either the redirect lands on the advertised TLD, or alternatively that you're at least "in control" of the TLD you're advertising as (similar to GAnalytics verification -- via meta tag, DNS txt entry, etc)?

Google does.

Doesn't seem to work much better than whatever solution Bing uses, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18317051

Though that was 2017, and Google might've improved their protections since then.

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

#212

Post by Waterluvian »

sharcerer wrote: post #205
weinzierl wrote: post #192

Call me paranoid, but every time I install software on Windows [1] I do the following dance: 1. Search for the name of the software on Google [2]. 2. Open link to software in separate tab. 3. Open Wikipedia link (usually on the same SERP) for software in separate tab. 4. Compare domain name from direct link with the domain name from the Wikipedia article. 5. Open another tab and type domain name manually. 6. Find dow…

I do this too. Perfectly normal.

Well... normal for the 1% of us tech savvy computer users.

This reminds me of a podcast I listened to last night where a physician explained how to get a flu shot: go to your place of work and do it yourself. Of course she was being sarcastic.

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

#213

Post by diegoperini »

jeffhuys wrote: post #207
sharcerer wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do this too. Perfectly normal.

Except people who are more tech-illiterate don't do it, and we're the minority here. It shouldn't be normal.

I have a deal with people who I love most. They are NOT allowed to install new software without my supervision. In return, they buy me coffee/treats for the help. It works! I presume this deal will continue to exist until binary signatures become a thing of importance for the end user.

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

#214

Post by AzzieElbab »

userbinator wrote: post #139
AzzieElbab wrote: post #112

Bing is likely to return spam and scams on any search. There is no conspiracy against Chrome.

Incidentally, the relative lack of filtering/censorship also means I've had far more luck "Binging" obscure/fringe/questionable-content sites than with Google. I suppose them receiving fewer DMCA takedowns also contributes.

I guess there is an upside to everything. I would definitely use bing if I wanted to compile a list of scammers or something along these lines

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

#215

Post by JCSato »

The argument to ditch Windows felt kind of shoehorned in.

If Bing is returning malicious search results, that's a reason to stop using the search engine, _not the whole OS_. The October update fiasco is a reason to stop using Windows. These are separate issues in separate projects made by separate teams, happening at separate times.

The implication is that everything MSoft touches is insecure or otherwise out to get me is weakly supported. It may or may not be true, but a quick toss in of one data point about how Windows is bad and oh by the way Ubuntu is better isn't convincing.

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

#216

Post by JCSato »

beager wrote: post #22
greenyoda wrote: post #3

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…

This might be a bit obtuse of me to say, but:

> This has everything to do with Edge, which is purposely configured to use a search engine that creates a liability for users.

You could say the exact same thing about Chrome and not be lying.

(The obtuseness being likening Google tracking to malware ads)

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

#218

Post by mcintyre1994 »

nl wrote: post #190
amarant wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Makes me wonder how Microsoft ranks search results. Surely if they were counting links to a page from other pages (like Google does), Google would've come out on top? Or does noone link to Google anymore since people tend to find their way there anyway?

Ads aren’t ranked like pages.

Surely there isn't a page and a half of adverts before any legitimate page?

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

#219

Post by cptskippy »

the_clarence wrote: post #180
bhauer wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sucks. I know it's a tired point, but it nevertheless amuses me that someone would search for BattleNet. The name is literally the domain name: battle.net.

This is not a very clever point. Plenty of things used to be caller "somethingnet" in order to advertise their ties with the internet. It was never about a tld. Kind of like how having "block" or "chain" in your app's name makes you "cool" nowadays.

I wonder if it was to associate with the internet or with Microsoft branding.

Microsoft went apeshit and called all their products .NET in the early 2000s. The branding was all over the place so I could see how calling your product *net might get you installs by association.

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

#220

Post by kayone »

weinzierl wrote: post #192

Call me paranoid, but every time I install software on Windows [1] I do the following dance: 1. Search for the name of the software on Google [2]. 2. Open link to software in separate tab. 3. Open Wikipedia link (usually on the same SERP) for software in separate tab. 4. Compare domain name from direct link with the domain name from the Wikipedia article. 5. Open another tab and type domain name manually. 6. Find dow…

Disclaimer: I'm the author/maintainer for AppGet [0].

What you explained here is one of the main selling points (as in convincing, appget is completely free) for appget.

AppGet pretty much automates what you explained here and more.

We automatically download and validate SHA256 of downloads (We have a strict policy of only allowing releases from the official source)

All package info that is used to install applications are fully public in our GitHub repository [1] (think homebrew)

Also, for less tech-savvy users, they can install applications through our gallery e.g. https://appget.net/packages/i/chrome using appget as long as they have appget installed on the machine.

[0] https://appget.net

[1] https://github.com/appget/appget.packages/tree/master/manife...

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