Anyone who has visited a website only to have the browser hijacked and taken to another site knows how annoying these site “redirects” can be. More than annoying, they can also be a major security risk, which is why Google LLC will soon introduce new features to Google Chrome that could eliminate redirects for good.

According to Ryan Schoen, a product manager at Google, said today that one of every five feedback reports from Chrome desktop users concerns “some type of unwanted content,” including popups, autoplay videos and site redirects. Chrome already has a built in popup blocker, and the browser is also getting updates to address autoplay videos. Now Google hopes to address the remaining concern.

Schoen said that although redirects are sometimes used maliciously to trick users into visiting ads or even malware, many redirects are actually accidental. “We’ve found that this redirect often comes from third-party content embedded in the page, and the page author didn’t intend the redirect to happen at all,” Schoen said. To fix this issue, the upcoming Chrome 64 release will block redirects from third-party iframes and instead show an infobar informing the user that the browser prevented the redirect.”

One way redirects are often used to intentionally mislead users is to open a clicked link in a new tab while the original window navigates to a different page, often an ad. Schoen said this method is effectively used as a popup that circumvents Chrome’s popup blocker. Starting with Chrome 65, Google’s browser will automatically block this sort of redirect, users’ main tabs stay right where they want them.

Schoen noted that there are other unwanted website behaviors that are harder to detect, but Google will continue working to add new features to Chrome to protect users.

In addition to the new Chrome features, Google has also released an Abusive Experiences Report, which allows website owners to see how many times their website has been reported for abusive experiences, including redirects. The goal behind this report is to help site owners address these issues, but Schoen said sites with abusive experiences that are left unaddressed for 30 days will no longer be able to open new tabs or windows in Chrome.

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