Google Chrome Will Soon Warn Users If A Site May Charge Them Unauthorized Fees

Google is about to release an important update to Google Chrome, helping its users avoid being stealed by unclear or underhanded subscription services. The warning reads: “The page ahead may try to charge you money”

The warning in mobile version of Chrome

Several websites invite their visitors to subscribe to their services using phone numbers, mobile games for example, but users will usually not be aware of being charged or the amount they are going to be charged.

Many people are charging their users without their consent by exploiting the carrier billing. It allows people to avoid complicated methods of subscribing by charging fee directly to their phone bill. It is a very useful and convenient service for a lot of things because it can make it easier to make online payments and it doesn’t require you to have a credit card.

But many service and content providers exploit this convenience by obfuscating the key information from the signing up process, costs for example, whether the cost is a recurring or one-off thing.

Example of a subscription scam

Launching on December along with the Chrome 71’ launch, the desktop and mobile version of Google Chrome and also in Android’s Webview, will warn users if it detects an unclear billing information.

“We want to make sure Chrome users understand when they are going through a billing flow and trust that they’ll be able to make informed decisions while browsing the web,” wrote in its blog post of Google announcing the new Chrome’s update.

Of course, similar to other Chrome’s warnings, users can still choose if they want to proceed to the risky websites, but Chrome will still highlight the option of returning to your previous page.

Users can choose either proceed or go back to their previous page

The website’s owner can inform Google through its Google Search Console that their mobile subscription page requires improvement, and they can later inform Google when they have finished the improvements. And Google will remove the warning if it believes that their updates are sufficient.

According to Google, there are millions of Google Chrome users encountering websites with unclear mobile billing information.

If you offer your users to subscribing through their phone numbers on the websites, you may have to be clear with your cost and billing structure of a website before users signing up. And if you do not comply, then Google may flag your website with a warning.