How to Turn On Google Chrome's Enhanced Safe Browsing Feature

By Corporal Punishment

I suppose the first question here is, "What is Google Chrome's Enhanced Safe Browsing feature, and why should you turn it on?"

Google Chrome is the most popular web browser in the world, and it offers many features to enhance the Security and privacy of its users, such as blocking malicious downloads, warning about phishing sites, and encrypting web traffic. One of these features is Enhanced Safe Browsing, introduced in 2020 but not widely known about or turned on by default.

Enhanced Safe Browsing is a mode you can enable in Chrome's settings to get more proactive and tailored protection from web-based threats. When you turn it on, Chrome will check whether the pages and downloads you visit are potentially dangerous by sending information about them to Google Safe Browsing. This service analyzes billions of URLs per day to find unsafe sites.

You can benefit from improved detection and faster alerts by sharing more data with Google Safe Browsing. For example, Enhanced Safe Browsing can warn you if you are about to enter your password on a phishing site pretending to be a legitimate site, such as your bank or email provider. It can also protect you from downloading harmful files that could infect your device with malware or ransomware. It is designed to protect your privacy and give you more control over your online Security. However, this feature allows you to share more data with Google.

When you're signed in, Google uses information from Enhanced Safe Browsing, like URLs, parts of downloads, and other information, to associate information to help protect you across Google apps.

This information helps Google to:

Provide real-time security scanning to warn you about or block dangerous websites, downloads, and extensions.

Improve Google's ability to detect and protect against phishing and malware for you and everyone on the web.

Give you better protection from dangerous links across Google apps.

Enhanced Safe Browsing is an optional feature that you can turn on or off anytime. If you turn on Enhanced Safe Browsing for your account, it will automatically turn on in the background. This means that you will be protected even when you are not signed in to Chrome or Gmail, but this also implies you're sharing while not signed in.

According to Google this data will not be associated with your Google account or used for other purposes. I know some of you oppose this sort of thing - just a heads up.

Here are some of the benefits of turning on Enhanced Safe Browsing for your account:

More protection from phishing and malware attacks. Enhanced Safe Browsing uses a variety of techniques to identify and block phishing and malware attacks. This can help protect you from losing your personal information or having your computer infected with malware.

Improved Security in Google Chrome and Gmail. Enhanced Safe Browsing is integrated with Google Chrome and Gmail, so it can help protect you from dangerous websites and downloads when you are using these apps.

Better protection from dangerous links across Google apps. Enhanced Safe Browsing can help protect you from dangerous links in Google Docs, Google Drive, and other Google apps.

To enable Enhanced Safe Browsing in Chrome, go to Settings > Privacy and Security> Security and select "Enhanced protection." or go here https://myaccount.google.com/account-enhanced-safe-browsing They say the activation can take up to 24 hours - it was immediate in our test.

If you are concerned about your online Security, I recommend turning on Enhanced Safe Browsing for your account. It is a simple way to add an extra layer of protection to your online activities.