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Google Chrome may soon keep your back button from being hijacked

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6 years ago

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Google Chrome could stop something called "history manipulation."
Google Chrome could stop something called “history manipulation.”

Image: Getty Images/Cultura RF

2016%2f09%2f16%2fe7%2fhttpsd2mhye01h4nj2n.cloudfront.netmediazgkymde1lzex.0f9e7By Johnny Lieu2018-12-19 02:20:16 UTC

You’ve been there: Caught on a dodgy website, faced with a barrage of ads or suspicious content, and found yourself trapped — no matter how much you hit the back button.

It’s a sinister issue called “history manipulation,” where multiple dummy pages are inserted into your browser’s history to fast forward you to the page you were trying to leave.

The issue has been on the Chrome team’s radar since 2016, and now it could be a thing of the past in a future release of the browser, as spotted by 9to5Google.

In a series of published Chromium code changes, Chrome would flag pages that have been added to the back/forward history without the user’s intention, then skip them when the user hits the back button. 

Chrome would then send the questionable pages to Google for analysis. 

A Google spokesperson told Mashable that it’s part of the company’s ongoing work to stop navigation hijacking, but had nothing specific to share on the feature.

Lately, Chrome has been implementing features to protect users from shady behavior on the web, such as warning users when they might possibly fall into a phone billing subscription scam, and shaming websites that aren’t using HTTPS.

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