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Chrome browser users are encouraged: Google developers are implementing a feature that neutralizes abusive ads that covertly filter CPU resources, bandwidth, and electricity.
The move comes in response to a swarm of sites and ads first I noticed in 2017 that they surreptitiously use visitor computers to mine bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies. As the sites or ads display content, the embedded code performs the resource-intensive calculations and deposits the mined coin into a wallet designated by the developer. To hide the scam, the code is often very obfuscated. The only signs that something is wrong are fans, dead batteries and, for those who pay close attention, increased consumption of network resources.
In a post released Thursday, Chrome project manager Marshall Vale said that while the percentage of abusive ads is extremely low, around 0.3 percent, they account for 28 percent of CPU usage and 27 percent for percent of the network data.
“We recently discovered that a fraction of a percentage of ads consume a disproportionate share of the device’s resources, such as the battery and network data, without the user knowing,” Vale wrote. “These ads (such as those that mine cryptocurrency, are poorly programmed, or are not optimized for network use) can drain battery life, saturate already tense networks, and cost money.”
To cut practice, Chrome is limiting the resources a graphic ad can consume before a user interacts with it. If the limit is reached, the ad frame will navigate to an error page informing the user that the ad has consumed too many resources. A disabled ad will look like this:
To reach the threshold to disable an ad, Chrome developers measured a large sample of ads that Chrome users find. Ads that use more CPU or network data resources than 99.9 percent of general ads will be blocked. That translates to 4 megabytes of network data or 15 seconds of CPU usage in any 30-second period or 60 seconds of total CPU usage.
Chrome developers plan to experiment with limits in the coming months and add them to the stable version of the browser by the end of August. The purpose of delayed launch is to give ad creators and tool providers time to incorporate limits into their coding. Chrome users who want to activate the feature earlier can enable the flag in chrome: // flags / # enable-heavy-ad-intervention.
Several antivirus vendors have already provided the means for users to remove ads that are involved in so-called cryptojacking or similar types of abuse. Chrome users will soon have the means to do the same natively.
