Google Chrome Will Soon Prevent JavaScript Redirects for URL Clicks

Clicking any kind of link on the internet that you are not already familiar with in some way, shape or form can often be a pretty scary experience because of the fact that this is the sort of event that could potentially end up compromising your system if the link has been provided by a bad actor. Even if you know where the link is, a vulnerability in how Google Chrome reads JavaScript could make it so that the bad actor would redirect you to a different page in a new tab if you click on a link.

This is really dangerous because you have no way of knowing what the surprise link leads to, something that can cause a lot of tension and prevent you from truly understanding the kind of levels of safety that you can take advantage of on the internet. Google Chrome is now fixing this issue by blocking JavaScript redirects when they are done after a URL link has been clicked. Even if this does not lead to security breaches, there is a good chance that it could lead to a lot of spam and it is also used to prevent users from clicking away from a page that they have been lead to in spite of the fact that they did not initially want to go there.

The way that Google did this is similar to what Apple did as well by linking the code used to redirect to a different page to a noopener attribute that would block redirects from occurring. This can help give users a lot of peace of mind while they are surfing the web since they would no longer need to worry about things like what surprise link they might suddenly need to deal with if they were to click on a random URL they come across.

Read next: Good News For Android Users! Google Chrome is Finally Testing a Much Needed Feature In Incognito mode