Google is advising that it is time for webmasters to free up their schedule in the coming days and take the time to review the standards of their advertising spaces and block ads that have fake download buttons or messages that resemble errors or updates from various operating system functions and third-party software.
Last November, Google introduced support for its Safe Browsing technology, which will be able to block websites known for social engineering.
While only websites offering PUPs (Potentially Unwanted Programs) were targeted during that announcement, today Safe Browsing has expanded support to include other types of known attack vectors.
These include deceptive ads masquerading as update messages, pop-ups from familiar software, and deceptive download, playback, or close buttons.
Google , and then visitors who access these sites will see a classic Safe Browsing fullscreen message, warning them of the potential risks they may face if they browse further on the page in question.
Unfortunately, many sites face such problems with these types of ads, and most of the time, it is difficult to find all the advertisers who buy ad impressions on a given site and then abuse this privilege to show insidious content that can mislead site users.
While some of these ads are simply annoying, at some point, some of them also deliver malware or PUPs, and Google tries to discourage deceptive advertisers from going down this route by doing everything possible to ensure that users are warned well in advance.
Some of the ads that Google considers misleading:
