Google is a company that is deeply concerned about its users’ security, especially when browsing the internet through Chrome. On August, 2014, the internet giant announced its vision of users being able to use the web without any safety issues, such as malware or phishing scams. After this announcement, Google implemented a new unwanted software policy, in which several general recommendations were detailed for software developers to follow and provide an experience for their users free of any security threats. For Google, any software that violates the principles is considered as harmful and different actions must be taken to avoid downloading said software. Google Chrome’s Safe Browsing ability has greatly improved since then, blocking any sites that might lead the user into downloading a harmful program. Over the coming weeks, this feature will continue to enhance the overall experience of Google’s users, as the company will begin rolling out an improved malware detection algorithm that will be able to identify even more potential threats.
Chrome users will begin noticing more warnings when navigating the web, all due to the enhanced Safe Browsing technology. When a warning is displayed after navigating to an unsafe website, it doesn’t mean that your computer has already been infected by malware, but that Google has protected you from a potential threat. The increase in warnings can be simply acquainted to the improvements made to Safe Browsing, which is now a whole lot better at detecting sites hosting malware, unwanted software or has taken place in phishing attacks.
Google focused mainly on ad injectors, a type of application that inserts advertisement into websites that didn’t previously host them, hoping that an unsuspecting user will click said ads and be the target of a malware attack. The improved Safe Browsing feature is now able to successfully prevent these types of attacks, protecting numerous that otherwise would have happened without it. On May of this same year, Google reported that over 5 million warnings were shown per day, and over 50,000 malware-hosting and 90,000 phishing websites were brought to light every passing month. The fact that Google announced these changes to Safe Browsing means that they will be quite notorious and might spark some questions by Chrome users.