Google has been offering what it calls Safe Browsing to users of its web browser Chrome for some time now. Today, the company has announced a change in the standard version of Safe Browsing that should offer even better protection against malicious websites.
In a blog post, Google has stated that prior to today, the standard version of Safe Browsing stored a list of malicious websites on your PC or mobile device.
That list was updated every 30 or 60 minutes. However, Google has since discovered that a typical malicious website is only active for less than 10 minutes, on average.
Changes in Google to improve security for everyone
The change introduced today for Chrome users means that the Safe Browsing list can now be accessed from Google servers, so updates to this list are done in real time.
Google claims that this should reduce phishing attacks from these sites by up to 25% more compared to the old method.
The company added that with this change, “encryption and other privacy-enhancing techniques will be used to ensure that no one, including Google, knows which website you are visiting”.
This new standard Safe Browsing update is now available on Chrome desktop and iOS version, and Android device owners should receive this update by the end of March.
Recently, Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Mozilla formed an unusual multi-company team to help create Speedometer 3.0, the latest version of the popular web browser benchmarking tool.
