Google And Chrome Have A New Secret Weapon To Warn You About Dangerous Websites: Here's How

Google is enhancing the security level for Chrome users and its latest effort looks to protect you from possible malware attacks and warn you about phishing attempts. Google is calling it Safe Browsing, which speaks for itself and what support it offers. The new tool is available for Chrome users on the web as well as iOS devices, with Android users likely to get it in the coming weeks.

Google tends to make strong claims about its security protection often so how is the new tool different from the previous iterations? Here’s an in-depth lowdown on the Chrome feature that is coming to millions of users this month.

Google Safe Browsing: What Is It

Safe Browsing has been around for a while but Google claims it has enhanced the protection level, with focus now on phishing, malware attacks, warning users about possible intrusion through certain websites that you visit. Google basically uses its repository of malicious sites, and tracks if you have visited any one of them in recent times. The company claims it has been able to block around 25 percent of phishing attempts. The real-time tracking is more effective than its previous focus on alerting for the on-device malicious sites.

How Google Alerts You About Dangerous Sites?

Google has tweaked its tracking mechanism with its real-time function, and the process seems fairly complex yet effective. Google says when a person visits a website, Chrome gives a quick check for its safety through the cache. It also does a real-time check for the website’s safety by sending the URL to a privacy server.

From here, Google uses the granular details of the website, and shares the data in an encrypted form to the Safe Browsing server. Now, the server matches the website with its database and warns if it finds any concerns.

You might be thinking that going through the long process could affect the loading time of the website, especially if it checks out. However, Google assures that its real-time checks happen in the background and between the person visiting the website, and being warned about possible threats, the whole process doesn’t take a lot of time.