Not all famous ad blockers are what they appear to be, as we’ll show you today with a new program that ruins our browsing experience and jeopardizes our security.
Ad blockers that add ads and scams
About ten years ago, Chrome and other browsers plugins were developed that could prevent this indiscriminate use of advertising, even if it meant leaving the site without funding.
Google was fine with it, therefore ad-blocking extensions have been available on their website ever since. However, the issue is that it appears that several of them are harmful applications that show highly hazardous adverts. And this all without Google’s involvement.
The security company Imperva has found a browser extension called AllBlock that claims to block ads but injects them into Chrome and Opera.
That code snippet communicates with remote servers and downloads packets that according to Imperva, the operators of an ad injection fraud.
Researchers warn that this scam will include sponsored advertisements other than the genuine ads that would appear on a normal web page.
Some of those adverts include affiliate connections, which means that creators of this AbBlocker may be charging commissions to people who view the advertising inserted by artificial means.
To begin with, anybody who download this ad blocker will no longer see genuine web advertising (the ones that feed editors, designers, and others), thus they will start giving money to the extension’s creators as a result of deception and fraud.
As you can see, when it comes to the web, even when Google offers you an extension that appears to be safe, you must nevertheless exercise caution.
