Google Chrome turns 15 and in this time it has become the reference browser for many homes. One of the great challenges ahead is to improve security in the war they have against cybercriminals, who try to take advantage of any security gap to sneak in phishing or other malware.
The new function that the technological giant intends to enable in Chrome will practically mean that you will no longer need an antivirus to monitor your safe Internet browsing.
Real-time protection in Chrome
Google has decided to enable Chrome's real-time phishing protection for all users of its browser. Google Chrome's standard Safe Browsing feature will be deprecated and rolled out to its enhanced Safe Browsing feature in the coming weeks, providing real-time phishing protection to all users as they browse the web.
Since 2007, the Google Chrome browser has used a safe browsing security feature that protects users from malicious websites that send malware or display phishing pages. When you browse the web, Chrome checks to see if the domain you're visiting is on a local list of malicious URLs, and if it is, it blocks the site and displays a warning. The problem with this system is that since the list of banned URLs is hosted locally, it cannot protect you from new sites detected since the last time the list was updated.
In 2020 Google decided to provide a new level of security and introduced what they called an improved safe browsing function. This, instead of consulting a list that Google updates periodically, offers real-time protection against malicious sites you visit. It does this by checking Google's cloud database in real time to see whether a site is malicious and should or should not be blocked.
The enhanced safe browsing setting for your account can help you increase protection against phishing and malware in Google Chrome and Gmail. Some of the functions it has are the following:
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Automatically warns you about potentially dangerous sites, downloads, and extensions.
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Automatically notifies you of leaked passwords.
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Send additional information to Google about your activity.
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Inspects the safety of downloads and shows you a warning when a file may be dangerous (for added security, you can select to have the file sent to Google for analysis).
Improved safe browsing for everyone
This feature could be optionally activated in Google Chrome as a complement to standard safe browsing. However, as of now, it will roll out the improved Safe Browsing feature to all Chrome users over the next few weeks without any ability to revert to the previous version.
The browser developer says it is doing this because the locally hosted Safe Browsing list is only updated every 30 to 60 minutes, but 60% of all phishing domains last only 10 minutes. This creates a significant time gap that leaves people unprotected against new malicious URLs.
“To block these dangerous sites upon release, we are updating Safe Browsing to now compare sites to sites known to Google as malicious in real time. By shortening the time between threat identification and prevention, we expect to see 25% improved protection against malware and phishing threats", Google says on its blog.
Google states that data collected through enhanced safe browsing is only used to protect Google apps and users. This new version with mandatory installation will arrive in the coming weeks. Until then, you can activate it by following these steps:
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Open Chrome
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Click More (the three vertical dots icon in the upper right corner > Settings
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Click Privacy & security > Security > Safe Browsing.
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Select the “Safe Browsing” level you want to use.
