Chrome to get new ‘Safe Browsing’ features: All you need to know

June 6, 2021

Google will soon roll out a new Chrome 91 update, which will add new ‘Safe Browsing’ features. The new update will help Chrome users choose better extensions and will offer enhanced protection against downloading malicious files on the web.
So, if you download an unsafe extension, Chrome will alert you via a dialogue box. Google says the extensions built using the Chrome Web Store Developer Program Policies will be considered trusted by Enhanced Safe Browsing.
If you enable the ‘Enhanced Safe Browsing’ option, Google will do a check on every file you downloaded on Chrome and will alert you if it is malicious.
Google is yet to roll out these two features and users will soon get them with the Chrome 91 update. Until then, you can enable the existing ‘Safe Browsing’ features. The tool can predict and warn you about dangerous events before they happen, as per Google.
The company says the “web browser can be used to improve your security in other Google apps when you are signed in.” The current ‘Safe Browsing’ tool can also warn you if passwords are exposed in a data breach.
It can send URLs to ‘Safe Browsing’ to check them. Additionally, it sends a small sample of pages, downloads, extension activity, and system information to help discover new threats, as per Google. “Temporarily links this data to your Google Account when you’re signed in, to protect you across Google apps,” the company said.

“Since the initial launch, we have continuously worked behind the scenes to improve our real-time URL checks and apply machine learning models to warn on previously unknown attacks. As a result, Enhanced Safe Browsing users are successfully phished 35 percent less than other users,” Google said in a blog post.
You can enable the ‘Safe Browsing’ option by visiting the Settings section. Then, go to Privacy & Security and tap on ‘Security.’ Now, tap on Enhanced protection, which is listed under Safe browsing section.