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The Microsoft Edge mobile browser will soon tell you if you are looking at fake news

How to use the new Microsoft Edge mobile fake news detector.

Fake news is like the bad smell that just won’t go away. It has helped subvert democracy across the western world and continues to cause terrible local problems in countries like India and Malaysia. Efforts to curb the spread of fake news have gained urgency over the last few years, but the problem is still growing and spreading. This latest announcement from Microsoft comes as welcome news.

Microsoft is pairing up with the company NewsGuard to add a new feature to Edge on mobile that automatically flags up fake and untrustworthy news sites. The feature has been available as a desktop Edge plug-in for a while now. The NewsGuard extension is now being built into the Edge mobile browser for both Android and iOS. According to Endgadget, the update will be rolling out in stages and Edge users will receive a notification about the update soon.

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The way NewsGuard works is by rating news websites across various criteria. These include things like repetition of false content, misleading headlines, and transparency. These criteria are then pooled to create an overall trustworthy rating, which is displayed as a color-coded icon. A green icon indicates the news source is trustworthy, while a red icon will show if the source is unreliable. Clicking the icon will also open up what NewsGuard calls a “Nutritional Label,” which provides a more detailed credibility and transparency rating.

Microsoft first announced the partnership back in 2018 as a part of its Defending Democracy Program. Bringing NewsGuard to mobile apps is a big step for the fake news fighting democracy defenders. In the press release announcing the move to mobile, NewsGuard Co-CEO Gordon Crovitz said, “Releasing on the Microsoft Edge mobile apps is a milestone in the fight to bring consumers the information they need to counter false information, misinformation and disinformation online… We appreciate the opportunity to work with Microsoft, which is taking the lead among technology companies in providing its users with the information they need to counter unreliable news sources.”

How to use the new Microsoft Edge mobile fake news detector

Once the NewsGuard feature lands on your version of Microsoft Edge, you’ll have to open up Edge and go to the Settings menu. When you’re there, you’ll have to enable the new news rating option. Once active, this will display the rating icon for each site in the address bar. To see the more detailed version of the rating, simply click on the ratings icon. The more detailed credibility and transparency score will show information like who owns the site, who finances it, and more information about the credibility of the content.

Microsoft might be about to kill the Edge browser

Microsoft is announcing a new Chrome-based browser

Objectivity in the tech world is all relative. Microsoft did a great job with the Edge browser. They packed it full of useful features to help anybody wanting to browse the internet. It is much better than its predecessor, Internet Explorer, which has been drowning in problems for years. The issue now is that no one is really using Microsoft’s shiny new browser. Now, it looks like the software giant may have a solution.

Microsoft Edge Download Microsoft Edge Now

The idea of Microsoft Edge is to be as fast, clean, and lightweight as possible to cope with the demands of different devices, whether it be a PC, tablet or phone.

Microsoft is announcing a new Chrome-based browser

Like a lot of the software that Google develops, Chrome is open source. Well, not exactly. The Google Chrome web browser isn’t open source, but the Chromium code that sits at the heart of it is. This means that any developer can take the code that Google used to make Google Chrome and use it to make their own web browser. This system has led to some interesting browsers becoming available, all similar to Google Chrome in many ways, but also offering their own unique flavors based on the Chrome experience. Some could even be said to be better than Chrome itself, depending on how you want your browser to behave and what you want to use it for.

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Being a software giant in its own right, it is understandable that Microsoft didn’t go down the same route and decided to build a brand-new browser from scratch. Edge was supposed to be a showpiece program at the heart of Windows 10, but it’s not working out that way.

We’ve seen Microsoft engineers forced to turn to Chrome during presentations on Edge, and we’ve even seen crafty hackers taking advantage of the fact that most people only use Microsoft Edge to download Google Chrome. With new figures showing that only 4% of web users using Edge to surf the internet, could Microsoft be about to turn its back on the troubled browser? Things certainly look as though they might.

Microsoft is working on a new default browser for Windows 10. Reports in The Verge and Windows Central say that Microsoft is close to announcing new Chromium-based browser very soon. The reports don’t mention what will happen to Edge once this new browser (currently codenamed Anaheim) launches.

Will the browser replace Edge altogether? Could the new browser even take the name of Edge or could this new Chrome-based browser from Microsoft be released as a separate product altogether, with Microsoft soldiering on with Edge on the side? We’ll just have to wait and see before we find out, but if all the rumors flying around are to be believed, we won’t have to wait too long. As soon as we have more information about Microsoft’s new web browser we’ll let you know.

Hackers find a scary new way to target new Windows 10 users

The Bing search engine is showing up malicious and dangerous ads for search terms like “download chrome”

Microsoft Edge is a good browser. It is miles ahead of the Internet Explorer it replaced and Edge even does well when compared against modern browsers like Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox. For many users though, this won’t matter. Years of familiarity with their browser of choice means they’re unlikely to change to a browser like Edge, which was quite late to the game. This means that whenever they buy a new PC or laptop, or update their operating system to Windows 10, the default Edge web browser has one task: to download Chrome. This is a problem.

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The Bing search engine is showing up malicious and dangerous ads for search terms like “download chrome”

Windows 10 bug Microsoft Edge Google Chrome Download — Be careful if you’re going to use Microsoft Edge to download Google Chrome

The issue arises because we’ve all become accustomed to typing basic phrases into the address bar when we want something rather than typing in complete domain names. Hackers know that we’re like this and they set up traps accordingly. They can set up fake sites on authentic sounding domains like GoogleOnline2018.com and place legitimate sounding download files like ChromeSetup.exe. It all looks and feels fine until your PC falls victim to the malware these fake domains and files contain.

For more tips on avoiding phishing scams like this one check out our infographic below:

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This exact scam is what almost tripped up Gabriel Landau. He bought a new laptop and opened up Microsoft Edge so that he could download Google Chrome. Fortunately, he stopped himself from downloading the fake ChromeSetup extension when he noticed that the digital signature was linked to Alpha Criteria Ltd. and not Google.

Brand new Win10 laptop. Attempt to install Chrome. Almost get owned with my very first action. Why is this still happening in 2018, @bing? Please explain. pic.twitter.com/uYJhu7xa9H

— Gabriel Landau (@GabrielLandau) October 25, 2018

The real issue here is that this is a problem that Chrome and Firefox deal with automatically. The fake phishing sites, which show as normal on Edge, show warnings on both the Google and Mozilla browsers. Even worse for Microsoft is that this is not a new problem.

According to a How-to-Geek report, a similar issue on the Bing search engine was reported way back in April. Microsoft removed that ad, but the fact that an almost identical ad appeared over six months later means it hasn’t addressed the underlying issue. This lack of action is putting Bing users who are looking for Google Chrome at risk. Could it be spite?

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In the same report, Microsoft responded to say, “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 so we can take appropriate action.” This almost feels like an abdication of responsibility as it puts the emphasis on users to report false ads rather than on Microsoft itself to filter them out.

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This is just one more issue in a long list of problems Microsoft faces at the moment. It is also likely to hit the credibility of Edge that, default search engine aside, is an otherwise capable web browser.

To protect yourself against this particular threat you are going to have to take action that Microsoft isn’t going to like. To download Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox, click either of the two download buttons below.

Google Chrome Download Google Chrome Now

Mozilla Firefox Download Mozilla Firefox Now

If you do want to continue using Microsoft Edge, however, we recommend changing the default search engine from Bing immediately. Google is an obvious choice but there are plenty of other options out there.

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