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posted by Fnord666 on Saturday December 14 2019, @04:31AM   Printer-friendly
from the all-your-search-are-belong-to-us dept.

How a Chinese company built a $250 million search hijacking empire:

A publicly listed Chinese company has used a series of offshore shell companies to conceal their ownership of browser extensions that purport to offer a private search engine to users. These extensions with names like Search Encrypt and Hide My Searches engage in a form of ad fraud called search hijacking whereby searches are intercepted and redirected from one search engine to another. Our research has identified almost 7 million users who are affected by these malware extensions, which are helping this company generate almost $250 million a year in revenue.


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  • (Score: 2) by EJ on Saturday December 14 2019, @05:35AM (4 children)

    by EJ (2452) on Saturday December 14 2019, @05:35AM (#931964)

    Why would people install these things?

    • (Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 14 2019, @06:22AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 14 2019, @06:22AM (#931968)

      Why did people vote for #CrookedHillary?

    • (Score: 2) by black6host on Saturday December 14 2019, @02:32PM (2 children)

      by black6host (3827) on Saturday December 14 2019, @02:32PM (#932042) Journal

      My mother, who is up there in age, just installed this crap in Chrome. Rest assured that I've instructed her numerous times not to just click on stuff and don't install anything. Nonetheless, the allure of finding the information she wanted quickly was too much to resist. I looked at the extensions she had installed and I was shocked! Recipe search, coupon search, people finders, etc. Probably 10 or more different extensions.

      Apparently it's not just a matter of uninstalling the extensions. I did that and she's still getting pop up windows offering the search services. I was too tired to do much with it last night as I'm going to have to research how to get rid of what she got.

      What a pain in the ass.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 14 2019, @08:29PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 14 2019, @08:29PM (#932150)

        Set her up a user account and don't give her the password. She shouldn't be using the administrator account by default. If possible try to set her up a guest account or the most restrictive Windows account possible.

      • (Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday December 16 2019, @07:11PM

        by Freeman (732) on Monday December 16 2019, @07:11PM (#932966) Journal

        Yeah, your mother isn't the only one, otherwise they wouldn't be a $250 million dollar criminal mega corp.

        I know my mother-in-law has some particular affinities for "coupon plugins" that, if not malware are one step below it, good old ad-ware.

        --
        Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 14 2019, @08:06AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 14 2019, @08:06AM (#931981)

    A publicly listed Chinese company has used a series of offshore shell companies to conceal their ownership of browser extensions that purport to offer a private search engine to users.

    Does the private search work?
    If so, I don't give a damn if some idiots voluntarily pay them "$250 million a year in revenue." for ads. If the idiots don't like it, they can stop paying.

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