Microsoft is stuffing pop-up ads into Google Chrome on Windows again
www.theverge.com
The pop-ups are back after a brief pause.

The software giant first introduced malware-like pop-up ads last year with a prompt that appeared over the top of other apps and windows. After pausing that notification to address “unintended behavior,” the pop-ups have returned again on Windows 10 and 11.

Windows users have reported seeing the new pop-up in recent days, advertising Bing AI and Microsoft’s Bing search engine inside Google Chrome. If you click yes to this prompt, then Microsoft will set Bing as the default search engine for Chrome. These latest prompts look like malware, and once again have Windows users asking if they are legit or nefarious. Microsoft has confirmed to The Verge that the pop-ups are genuine and should only appear once.

Every trick Microsoft pulled to make you browse Edge instead of Chrome

    • Dehydrated@lemmy.worldEnglish
      12·
      4 months ago
      1. This only applies to the mobile app
      2. They stopped doing this in 2022
      3. LibreWolf comes with uBlock Origin preinstalled, which blocks all sorts of ads, trackers and other malicious JavaScript
      • Pantherina@feddit.deEnglish
        62·
        4 months ago

        Ublock Origin does not block “malicious Javascript” reliably. You need NoScript for that, and a opt-in approach. Block everything, unblock what you need, hope its not malicious.

          • Pantherina@feddit.deEnglish
            2·
            4 months ago

            Flash should be possible to disable about:config as its legacy technology.

            Could you explain the overlay remover?

            Noscript is the only good addon for blocking javascript and allowing only some parts for specific origins.

        • Dnn@lemmy.worldEnglish
          22·
          4 months ago

          While I actually do that, you cannot seriously recommend it to anyone. Hardly any site works without Javascript nowadays.

          • Pantherina@feddit.deEnglish
            31·
            4 months ago

            Yes thats why you have the button to click on. I also need to allowlist basically every site I visit.

            There should be some way to share such a list, to reduce the manual work.

            I highly recommend manually enabling Javascript.

            • Dnn@lemmy.worldEnglish
              3·
              4 months ago

              Sometimes it’s great. If people complain about paywalls, for example, and you didn’t even see the pop-up.

              • Pantherina@feddit.deEnglish
                13·
                4 months ago

                And sometimes it prevents sites from working, because paywalls that are avoidable by blocking the cover are deprecated and nowadays real solutions are used. This means such size will just break.

                Ublock can also remove overlays, and I am sure it you add more lists they will be blocked by default.

                Having less code run in your browser is always recommended.

      • joe_jowhat@lemmy.worldEnglish
        22·
        4 months ago

        I have nothing to do with Librewolf at all. Don’t confuse the two. I just said what Duckduckgo did with trackers based on a search agreement with Microsoft. BTW, this issue was initially exposed by others, not Duckduckgo itself.

      • spraynpray@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        46·
        4 months ago

        This only applies to the mobile app They stopped doing this in 2022

        Ah, in that case they are a highly trustworthy company whose products I will happily use in the future. They only allowed trackers with one of their privacy promising products and they stopped doing that after they got called out on it. Thank you for clarifying that they are one of the good ones.

        • Dehydrated@lemmy.worldEnglish
          12·
          4 months ago

          Suggest a better alternative then. Startpage, Mullvad Leta and Whoogle are just Google proxies (and Whoogle is pretty unreliable), SearX, SearXNG and 4get are also just proxies for multiple search engines. There are no good independent search engiens, Brave Search sucks because it’s made by Brave, a company notorious for pushing weird NFT and Blockchain shit, Mojeek has pretty bad search results and Kagi requires an account, and only allows 100 searches.

          • spraynpray@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
            2·
            4 months ago

            SearX, SearXNG and 4get are also just proxies for multiple search engines

            And DDG is just a proxy for Bing following that logic. I’d choose those three over DDG.

            Kagi requires an account, and only allows 100 searches

            Making a new account every 100 searches should be an option (albeit a somewhat tedious one), no?

            • Dehydrated@lemmy.worldEnglish
              3·
              4 months ago

              And DDG is just a proxy for Bing following that logic. I’d choose those three over DDG.

              Yeah, but if the alternatives aren’t better, why not just use DDG?

              Making a new account every 100 searches should be an option (albeit a somewhat tedious one), no?

              That ain’t a great solution either

              • spraynpray@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
                13·
                4 months ago

                Yeah, but if the alternatives aren’t better, why not just use DDG

                Because those alternatives never explicitly whitelisted trackers from MS.

                • Dehydrated@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  2·
                  4 months ago

                  Tell me which of the options I listed you would use.

                  • Startpage is owned by an advertising company
                  • Mullvad Leta is only available to Mullvad VPN customers
                  • Brave does a whole bunch of shady stuff, e.g. installing VPN services on people’s computers, although they never asked for it

                  The other options aren’t good either

                  • spraynpray@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
                    1·
                    4 months ago

                    Startpage is owned by an advertising company

                    Yes, if the choice is between DDG and that, I’d choose DDG.

                    Mullvad Leta is only available to Mullvad VPN customers

                    Never heard of it.

                    Brave does a whole bunch of shady stuff, e.g. installing VPN services on people’s computers, although they never asked for it

                    They installed a Windows service that was needed to run their VPN. That service on its own does nothing. That what I heard at least. I didn’t look to much into it since I don’t really care. Brave sucks and I wouldn’t trust it, so I agree on principle. Also worse than DDG.

                    The other options aren’t good either

                    SearXNG and 4get is what I recommend for privacy. They get their results from other search engines but those won’t be able to trace the query back to you. Also, it’s open source and everyone can set up their own instance so there is no incentive to generate profit from your data.