Consumer monitoring firm Which? recently said that the Chrome browser does not recognize the vast majority of phishing websites. Google has questioned the validity and use of the research.
According to a study by Which? of the top 800 newly discovered phishing sites, Chrome on Windows only blocked 28% of them, while macOS only blocked 25%. These numbers are in stark contrast to the top-performing browser, Firefox, which redirects users from 85 percent of these sites on Windows and 78 percent on Mac.
In a statement sent to British news outlet The Independent, Google was skeptical of Which?’s findings:
The methods and results of this study require careful scrutiny. For more than 10 years, Google has helped other browsers set anti-phishing standards — and provided the underlying technology for free. Google and Mozilla often work together to improve the security of the web, and the Firefox browser largely relies on Google’s Safe Browsing API to block phishing — but researchers say Firefox offers significantly more protection from phishing than Chrome. It is highly unlikely that browsers using the same technology to detect phishing would have meaningful differences in the level of protection they provide, so we remain skeptical of this report’s findings.
Phishing scams are almost as old as the internet. They usually take the form of emails or text messages with links to fraudulent websites masquerading as the official login pages of any number of legitimate companies. Chrome, Firefox and other browsers try to filter out these suspicious websites.
Phishing scams are most easily mitigated at the user level. Consumers should be suspicious of unsolicited emails asking for information or asking them to log into a website, no matter how formal the email or website appears. Poor grammar or spelling and unusual URLs are other clear signs that the email isn’t really coming from a bank or other website that users frequently visit.