In recent days, Google has been actively encouraging Gmail users to enable Enhanced Safe Browsing within the application. This prominent promotion appears above the inbox on both Android and web versions, highlighting the added protection against phishing as the key advantage.
By activating Enhanced Safe Browsing, users gain access to real-time security scanning, which promptly notifies or blocks potentially dangerous websites, downloads, and extensions. Furthermore, this feature enhances Google’s ability to detect and safeguard against phishing attempts and malware, benefiting not only the individual user but also the wider online community. Additionally, it offers superior protection from hazardous links across various Google applications.
In other noteworthy security news, Google revealed that 70% of Google Accounts, belonging to regular users of their products, automatically benefit from second-factor authentication. This additional layer of security confirms users’ identities whenever a suspicious sign-in is detected, and the company aims to encourage wider adoption of this safeguarding measure.
Gmail started showing this Enhanced Safe Browsing banner at the top of my email list recently.
Normally, this is an account-level feature, not specific to Gmail. I was confused. Is this now also a Gmail setting?
Well, turns out that all it does is open https://t.co/4PuddoCrBL. pic.twitter.com/UjJojqoKD7
— Artem Russakovskii (@ArtemR) July 17, 2023
Enhanced Safe Browsing, initially introduced in Chrome three years ago, provides real-time web protections. While the standard version operates by checking the URLs of visited websites against a locally stored list refreshed every 30 minutes, Enhanced Safe Browsing was developed to address sophisticated phishing sites that could bypass this update period.
Through the analysis of uncommon URLs and the submission of samples of suspicious downloads and pages, this feature effectively determines whether users are about to access a phishing site. It also collects data from other signed-in apps such as Gmail and Google Drive to contribute to its protection mechanisms.
Over time, Enhanced Safe Browsing has expanded its capabilities to include warnings about Chrome extensions, conduct comprehensive file analysis, and utilize machine learning models. Presently, it is also available in Chrome for iOS. To activate Enhanced Safe Browsing, users can simply follow the Gmail prompt, which will direct them to the relevant page: myaccount.google.com/account-enhanced-safe-browsing.