The latest iOS 9 beta comes with a new spam-alert blocking feature that prevents harmful and malicious websites from spamming you with dodgy popups. Apple added the feature in iOS 9 beta 4 and it is one of the many improvements the company has added to its mobile browser for the Fall.
We all have come across such popups while browsing on our iOS devices that ask for installing a dodgy app to fix something and make it difficult to close the popup or navigate away from it, making such spammy popup more annoying.
With the ever growing number of iOS devices sold, the number of folks trying to take advantage of that for their own gains is also growing. And Apple has also found that out, with growing number of spammers and scammers targeting iOS users. Apple now seems to have started to fight back.
In Safari for Mac, Apple lets its Mac users to block alerts on websites that attempt to display popup again and again, and now the same feature has made its wy into the iOS 9. When a website continually shows popup messages, a warning appears that reads “This website is showing frequent alerts, do you want to block future alerts from this website.” Users are offered the option to “Block Alerts” to prevent that website from showing further alerts.
Apple has added this scam prevention feature after a recent ‘call center scam’ that hit iOS devices. In the scam, Safari popups were used to trick users into making a “support” call and after the call, users were asked to pay to get a bogus issue fixed on their iOS device.
The only way to Prevent such popups from appearing is by turning Javascript off within Safari’s settings. With the addition of this new feature in mobile Safari, iOS 9 will really make life easier by blocking popups on selective websites only.
iOS 9 is currently available to developers as beta 4 and a public beta 2 is available to the testers out there. Apple is expected to publicly release iOS 9 in September alongside the launch of new iPhones.
via [Redmondpie]