Google Safe Browsing Service Comes To Android

Last month we reported on Google beefing up its Safe Browsing service to improve its ability to protect internet users from malware, unwanted software and social engineering attacks. Safe Browsing is already used by over a billions of Chrome desktop users and Google has now extended this protection to its Android mobile operating system.

Safe Browsing is known for prompting warning pages on the Chrome web browser when a user tries to access a potentially malicious website. This was a feature Chrome users on Android didn’t have. Why has it taken so long for Google to bring the Safe Browsing service to Android? Here’s the company’s explanation:

Providing this protection on a mobile device is much more difficult than on a desktop system, in no small part because we have to make sure that list doesn’t get stale, yet:

  • Mobile data costs money for most users around the world. Data size matters a lot.
  • Mobile data speeds are slower than Wi-Fi in much of the world. Data size matters a lot.
  • Cellular connectivity quality is much more uneven, so getting the right data to the device quickly is critically important. Data size matters a lot.

Starting from Chrome version 46, Safe Browsing will be enabled by default for Android users. You can check if it’s on by going into Chrome’s Setting > Privacy menu. The Safe Browsing client on Android is also being rolled into the Google Play Service, which means we’ll it protect other in-house apps in the future.

[Via Google Online Security Blog]


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