Get Rid of Naver's Fearmongering Browser Banner

  • 2023-01-24 (Tue)
  • One-minute read
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What the hell is this, Naver?

naver-banner

No, I’m not using an outdated browser. Naver is just pushing for their self-developed browser, Naver Whale. The problem is that the banner makes users believe that the browser they’re currently using is vulnerable in terms of security, when it might not be (as I get this banner on the latest versions of Firefox and Safari).

But Naver Whale isn’t some special browser. It’s just a skin and some customizations on top of Google’s Chromium (which is a base of Google Chrome). As Naver has to re-modify and re-distribute Chromium every time Google releases a new version, Naver Whale could actually be slower in distributing security updates.

So how do we get rid of this banner? We can just block it with our browser’s ad-blockers. The HTML element to block is as follows:

<div id="NM_TOP_BANNER" ...>

To convert this into an ad-block rule (on uBlock Origin, for example):

###NM_TOP_BANNER

ad-block

I wish they’d refrain from false advertising. Actually, wasn’t it illegal in the first place?

naver

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