When it comes to browsing the internet, few things are more annoying than ads. Small, large, silent or noisy, they are certainly things we could do without.
The best way to avoid them is to install an ad-blocker, and fortunately for us, there are many to choose from. Generally, the only drawback to them is they occasionally block something we actually wanted to see, but that’s a small price to pay for an ad-free internet.
But now fake ad-blockers are fooling millions. Google Chrome users are facing that issue right now, as extensions they thought were blocking ads did more bad than good.
Millions of browsers were infected
At issue here are five ad-blockers that were available in the Chrome Web Store that along with blocking ads, infected the computers they were installed in.
The fake ad-blocker was discovered by researchers with AdGuard, and following their report, Google removed the five suspected extensions from their store. The most downloaded one, AdRemover, had more than 10 million people using it, and it was discovered that in total, they were all downloaded a combined 20 million times.
Along with AdRemover, uBlock Plus, Adblock Pro, HD for YouTube and Webutation, were not what they appeared to be.
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