Explained: What is Google’s Enhanced Safe Browsing?

Data breaches can have a significant impact on a person’s life and the most common scam that innocent people witness is email phishing which can result in heavy losses. According to Statista, 300,497 people were victims of phishing in 2023, with a staggering number of 58,859 people facing data breaches. 

And in the wake of increasing phishing attacks, Google is urging its users to enable Enhanced Safe Browsing. The notification was first observed by 9to5Google and it states: “Over the past few days, Google has been prominently promoting Enhanced Safe Browsing in the Gmail apps.”

The notification is visible just above the inbox of Android, iOS, and desktop users. It reads: “Get additional protection against phishing”

“Turn on Enhanced Safe Browsing to get additional protection against dangerous emails,” it adds.

You can easily dismiss the option by clicking the “No thanks” button but if you want to add an extra layer of protection to your Google account then tapping the “Continue” button will take users to “Enhanced Safe Browsing for your account”

Source: Google

What Exactly Is Google’s Enhanced Safe Browsing?

According to Google Account Help, “Enhanced Safe Browsing for your account works automatically in the background to provide faster, proactive protection against dangerous websites, downloads, and extensions.”

“If you choose to turn on Enhanced Safe Browsing for your account, Enhanced Safe Browsing keeps you safe when you’re signed in and improves your security in Google Chrome and Gmail,” it adds. 

In its essence, this feature adds an extra layer of security to your Google account. The security update arrived in 2020 and 

The standard version of Safe Browsing works by checking the URL of sites you visit against a local list. It further detects and warns about dangerous events when they happen. 

Enhanced Safe Browsing works on top of the standard version of Safe Browsing. It uses Google's cloud-based servers to check sites in real-time against a much larger list of known dangerous websites. 

Unlike the standard version, it predicts and warns about dangerous events before they occur. 

It also warns users if their passwords are exposed in a data breach so that they can change them immediately. 

However, this comes at a cost. By enabling enhanced safe browsing, Google can store your data for a short period of time which it guarantees that it gets deleted after some time. 

Here is what a Google Blog states: “By choosing Enhanced Safe Browsing, users will share additional security-related information in order to improve their online protection. This data is used only for security purposes and deleted after a short period of time.” 

How to Setup Enhanced Safe Browsing?

Here are the steps to enable Enhanced Safe Browsing on your desktop: 

• Click the three dots in the upper right corner next to your profile picture. 
• Tap Settings and click on Privacy and Security
• Scroll down and click Security 
• Click on Enhanced Protection

To conclude, while Enhanced Safe Browsing does store some of your data, it is a powerful tool that can help protect you from online threats. By enabling this security feature, you can help keep your personal information safe.