Google claims to be improving Chrome’s built-in Safe Browsing mode to provide enhanced security against nefarious websites. Up until now, this mode has determined if a file or website might be hazardous by consulting a locally maintained list. Although Google claims that a harmful website only lasts for an average of 10 minutes, the list is updated every 30 to 60 minutes.
In order to counter that, Google is utilizing a feature of Safe Browsing’s Enhanced protection mode to instantly compare websites to a server-side list of known dangerous websites. Although these real-time inspections provide “significant value,” Google has decided to include them in the basic version of Safe Browsing instead of only offering the opt-in Enhanced protection mode.
The company notes that Safe Browsing is used on more than 5 billion devices and it helps protect against the likes of phishing, malware and unwanted software. The mode evaluates north of 10 billion URLs and files day. Chrome shows users more than 3 million warnings for potential threats through this feature on the daily. However, Google believes that real-time URL checks will help it to block 25 percent more phishing attempts.
Google says it’s keeping privacy in mind as Safe Browsing doesn’t share the URLs of sites you visit with the company. Chrome says this feature employs hashing and encryption. A privacy server strips out any details that might identify a user before forwarding encrypted hash prefixes to the Safe Browsing server to check against the list of sketchy sites.
The company still recommends that users adopt the Enhanced protection mode as it offers additional safeguards. The Safe Browsing option only checks against a list of sites that are already known to be unsafe. Enhanced protection looks at additional factors and uses machine learning to identify risky sites that Safe Browsing hasn’t yet confirmed as potentially malicious. Freshly created sites and those that mask their true behavior may not be picked up on by Safe Browsing’s detection systems right away.
The new Safe Browsing feature is available now on the latest desktop and iOS versions of Chrome now. It’s coming to the Android app later this month.
Meanwhile, Google says it recently updated Chrome’s Password Checkup feature on iOS. Along with alerting you to compromised passwords, it will now warn you about weak and reused credentials.
