A Twitter user recently uncovered a malicious ad promoting a fake Google Chrome website on Microsoft’s Bing search engine that were seen by few users before Microsoft removed them.
According to a report from a Twitter user, Bing has been serving up fake or malicious Google Chrome ads. This ad appeared when the user typed “download Chrome” in the address bar of the browser using Bing as the search engine.
In most of the cases, there was one ad redirecting to the original Google’s website but unfortunately, in some rare cases, Bing displayed a website that was disguised to look like Google’s website.
The fake site does not look like Google’s official website but the ad URL is Google.com and it looks genuine enough to fool some people.
Following the user’s report on the fake ad, Microsoft quickly removed it from the Bing search engine.
In a tweet, Microsoft’s Bing ads team confirmed that the malicious ad has been removed and the company says that such such reports are taken seriously. “Hi Gabriel, protecting customers from malicious content is a top priority and we have removed the ads from Bing and banned the associated account. We encourage users to continue to report this type of content at [Bing’s report section] so we can take appropriate action,” the tweet reads.
Hi Gabriel, protecting customers from malicious content is a top priority and we have removed the ads from Bing and banned the associated account. We encourage users to continue to report this type of content at https://t.co/Dh1KuF5O0t so we can take appropriate action. ^GC
— Bing Ads (@BingAds) October 26, 2018
This is not a very big deal and it is something that has affected other tech companies as well. For example, several bogus extensions in the Chrome Web Store were published to trick millions of people into installing them.
