Images | Google Online Security Blog
Google’s security team built the Safe Browsing to identify the malicious websites and warn the users about various online risks. This technology scans billions of URLs per day and looks for unsafe websites and flags them. Up until now, the unsafe websites were put into two categories — Malware sites and Phishing sitesNow, Google has expanded its Safe Browsing feature to protect you from deceptive embedded contents like deceptive download buttons, or a fake image that warns you about the potential threats inside your system.
This step is a part of Google’s social engineering policy announced in November that categorized the embedded content on a web page as social engineering when — a website tries to deceive you by looking like a trusted entity (website, browser, or device), or a website tricks you into entering your passwords or sharing some personal information.
To make the people more aware, Google has also shared some examples of the deceptive content in a Google Online Security blog post.
Here’s an image from a website that claims that your software is out-of-date to trick you into clicking the ‘update’ button —
Here are the fake download and play buttons that seem like a part of a website (video streaming or TV show) —
So, if Google considers that a website is hosting deceptive content, it will show a bright red screen with warning “Deceptive site ahead”. This warning will prevent the users from clicking the misleading ads that trick them into downloading malware.
Google calls it ‘just the beginning’ of its fight against social engineering and promises to roll out more features to improve the web browsing experience of the users.
For the website admins, Google suggests them to check their webmaster tools console to see if their site is flagged for containing social engineering content.
fossBytes advises its readers to use the internet safely by following the best internet security practices.
