Safety has often been one of Chrome's selling points, thanks to the Google Safe Browsing extensive database of potentially harmful websites. You've probably faced a deceptive site alert at least once when trying to download illegal content watch pony videos, thanks to the browser's built-in ability to detect potentially dangerous pages. Back in January, we reported Chrome would extend its warning system to let you know when you're accessing a deceptive URL such as androldpoice.com instead of androidpolice.com. The new feature is now rolling out to all users starting today, together with an extension that lets you report sites that deliberately try to confuse people.
The new warning will automatically alert users when they access a deceptive URL and invite them to go back to safety by suggesting the actual site they're trying to visit, as shown above. In order to do so, Chrome analyzes the web address, looking for special characters that look like letters. It also compares the page with your browsing history to assess if the site is trying to confuse you with a URL that looks like one of your frequently visited sites.
Together with this new safety functionality, Google is introducing the Suspicious Site Reporter Extension, which lets you report mistrustful sites to Google Safe Browsing. In the past, the feature would typically rely on an automatic assessment of a page to determine if it could be dangerous. Now, any user will be able to act as a whistleblower and add potentially harmful pages to the database. Of course, these would then be processed by Google, but the extension already analyzes why the site could be suspicious and includes some additional details for further investigation.
The deceptive URL warning will be automatically available in Chrome, but you'll have to manually install the Suspicious Site Reporter Extension if you'd like to help other users out. You should be able to access both features starting today on Chrome for desktop, but Google hasn't shared any details regarding mobile availability yet.
PRESS RELEASE
New Chrome Protections from Deception
Emily Schechter, Chrome Product Manager
Chrome was built with security in mind from the very beginning. Today we’re launching two new features to help protect users from deceptive websites. The Suspicious Site Reporter Extension will improve security for Chrome users by giving power users an easy way to report suspicious sites to Google Safe Browsing. We’re also launching a new warning to protect users from sites with deceptive URLs.
We designed Chrome to be secure by default, and easy to use by everyone. Google Safe Browsing has helped protect Chrome users from phishing attacks for over 10 years, and now helps protect more than 4 billion devices every day across multiple browsers and apps by showing warnings to people before they visit dangerous sites or download dangerous files. We’re constantly improving Safe Browsing, and now you can help.
Safe Browsing works by automatically analyzing the websites that we know about through Google Search’s web crawlers, and creating lists of sites that are dangerous or deceptive. With the Suspicious Site Reporter extension, you can help Safe Browsing protect web users by reporting suspicious sites. You can install the extension to start seeing an icon when you’re on a potentially suspicious site, and more information about why the site might be suspicious. By clicking the icon, you’re now able to report unsafe sites to Safe Browsing for further evaluation. If the site is added to Safe Browsing’s lists, you’ll not only protect Chrome users, but users of other browsers and across the entire web.One way that deceptive sites might try to trick you is by using a confusing URL. For example, it’s easy to confuse “go0gle.com” with “google.com”. In Chrome 75, we’re launching a new warning to direct users away from sites that have confusing URLs.This new warning works by comparing the URL of the page you’re currently on to URLs of pages you’ve recently visited. If the URL looks similar, and might cause you to be confused or deceived, we’ll show a warning that helps you get back to safety.
We believe that you shouldn't have to be a security expert to feel safe on the web, and that many Chrome power-users share our mission to make the web more secure for everyone. We’ll continue improving Chrome Security to help make Chrome easy to use safely, and are looking forward to collaborating with the community to further that goal. Install the new extension and start helping protect web users!