Google announced today that it is modifying the browsing capability of its flagship Chrome internet browser to include real-time risk protection. It’s now available on desktop, iPhone, and iPad, and will arrive later this month on Android.
“Safe Browsing already protects more than five billion devices worldwide, protecting them against phishing, malware, unwanted software, and more,” Google’s Jonathan Li and Jasika Bawa write in the announcement post. “In fact, Safe Browsing evaluates more than 10 billion URLs and files every day, showing more than 3 million warnings to users about potential threats. “
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Until now, Safe Browsing used a local list to check if a site or record was potentially dangerous and updated this list every 30 to 60 minutes. But because an average malicious site has an active lifespan of less than 10 minutes, Google needed to provide a more complicated reaction in real-time.
Here’s why the change: Safe Browsing now verifies sites and files in real-time, unlike a cloud-based list that dynamically updates and uses encryption and other techniques to maintain your privacy. And the warnings displayed through this feature inform the user with more information. Google expects to block more than 25% more phishing attempts with this change, which is impressive when using Safe Browsing given the statistics from the quote above.
Google notes that users who need even more coverage can turn on Safe Browsing’s enhanced coverage mode, which uses AI to block attacks, perform deep log analysis, and provide more coverage against potentially malicious Chrome extensions. (You can learn more here. )
Speaking of which, Google also revealed that it recently updated password verification in Chrome for iPhone and iPad to show an alert whenever it detects a weak or reused password, which in the past it did only with compromised passwords.
Paul Thurrott is an award-winning technology journalist and blogger with more than 25 years of industry experience and 30 books. He owns Thurrott. com and hosts third-generation podcasts: Windows Weekly with Leo Laporte and Richard Campbell, Hands-On Windows, and First Ring Daily with Brad Sams. In the past, he was a Senior Technology Analyst at Windows IT Pro and a SuperSite writer for Windows from 1999 to 2014 and a Thurrott. com Major Dome at BWW Media Group from 2015 to 2023. You can connect with Paul via email, Twitter, or Mastodon.
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