Microsoft has begun rolling out an innovative scareware blocker in its Edge browser this week. This AI-powered feature operates on Windows PCs and is capable of identifying and blocking existing scams, as well as detecting new and emerging threats through a local machine learning model.
According to the Microsoft Edge team, the scareware blocker provides a new first line of defense against scams that attempt to open full screen pages. “The scareware blocker utilizes a machine learning model that operates locally on the user’s computer,” they explain in a blog post. “This model employs computer vision to compare full screen pages against thousands of scam samples shared by the scam-fighting community. Importantly, the model works locally, ensuring that images are not saved or sent to the cloud.”
Microsoft Edge will warn you if it has detected a new scam website. | Image: Microsoft”>
Once a scam is detected, Microsoft Edge will automatically exit the full screen mode that malicious sites attempt to enforce, halt audio playback, and warn the user with a thumbnail of the page being viewed. Users can then report the site, prompting its addition to Microsoft’s Defender SmartScreen service, which automatically blocks Edge users from accessing known scam sites.
Originally announced at Ignite in November, the scareware blocker in Microsoft Edge is now available in preview mode within the latest stable channel release of the browser. Users will need to manually enable the scareware blocker in Edge’s privacy settings and restart the browser to access this preview feature.
