Google Chrome to improve Safe Browsing Protection Status Updates

Google wants to strike a balance between performance and security. We’ve seen this with improvements like the Dangerous download warning, preventing malicious Chrome redirect campaigns, and faster website safe site checks to performance issue alerts. The company is now enhancing the Safe Browsing feature by making its protection status updates more dynamic and responsive in the Chrome browser. Recent work by Chrome developers will reflect in Safe browsing card in Safety check.

Currently, the Safe Browsing card on the Safety check page displays a static protection status, even if the settings were changed. This meant users might have outdated information about their protection level.

To address this, Google is implementing a new change that will continuously monitor Safe Browsing settings and update the card accordingly. This is achieved by tracking two Safe Browsing preferences. These preferences determine the three possible Safe Browsing states: Enhanced, Standard, or Disabled.

“[SHv2] Add listeners for Safe Browsing card. Safe Browsing is one of the top cards on Safety Hub page that informs a user about the current Safe Browsing setting state [1].

At the moment the Safe Browsing card data is pulled from backend on page load and remains the same regardless of simultaneous changes made in other tabs/devices to the Safe Browsing setting.

This CL adds a listener to Safe Browsing changes to make the Safe
Browsing card dynamic.” Google notes in a commit, spotted by Windows Report.

Google will now simplify the process by combining the information from the two original preferences into a single value. Any changes to this new generated preference will trigger an update to the Safe Browsing card on the Safety Hub page avaialble at chrome://settings/safetyCheck.

This improvement will provide users with more accurate and up-to-date information about their Safe Browsing protection status, improving their overall online security experience.

By making the Safe Browsing card dynamic, Google is taking a proactive step to protect users from potential online threats.

Apart from the Safe Browsing protection status update in Chrome, the browser will also address out-of-memory issues. A proposal has been prepared for this. Additionally, Chrome may soon notify users about its features and tips via notifications on Windows.