[MUSIC INTRO]
Hi, I'm Ian, and I'm a product manager on Google Chrome.
Browsing the web more safely involves using
a more secure browser.
Most browsers today include features to help protect you
and your computer from malicious websites as you
browse the web, particularly protection against phishing
and malware attacks.
A phishing attack takes place when someone masquerades as
someone else to trick you into sharing personal or other
sensitive information with them, usually through
a fake website.
Malware, on the other hand, is software installed on your
machine without your knowledge and is designed to harm your
computer or potentially steal information from your computer.
A browser can provide phishing and malware protection by
checking if the web page you are trying to access is
suspected of being or known to be malicious.
Chrome accomplishes this check by using safe
browsing technology.
When you visit a page, safe browsing technology and Chrome
checks the web address against a list of suspected phishing
and malware websites.
This list is stored and maintained locally
on your computer.
As you browse the web, each page can be checked quickly
against the local list without needing to communicate
with any external sources.
If a match against a local list is found, a request to Google
is sent for more information.
The web address included in this request is
completely obscured.
Chrome does not send a web address in plain
text to Google.
To be clear, a request to Google is sent if, and only if,
a match against the local list is found and needs
to be verified.
If Google verifies that there's a match, Chrome shows a red
warning page to alert you that the page you're trying
to navigate to may be malicious or compromised.
To ensure that you're protected as best as possible, this
list of phishing and malware websites needs to be updated.
The way safe browsing works is that roughly every half hour an
update to the list is downloaded from Google and
stored locally on your computer.
By storing these lists locally, safe browsing is designed to
help users browse the internet more safely and more securely,
while respecting the user's privacy.
We take great care to make sure that you don't have to send a
record of every browsing session to Google or an
external source to be checked for phishing or malware.
Chrome only sends a request when there's a match against
the locally stored list of suspected websites and
the request is obscured.
Safe browsing technology was pioneered by Google and has
been adopted by other browsers.
Safe browsing can be disabled from the Chrome
options dialogues.
However, disabling this feature means that you will not be
warned before you visit a suspected phishing website
or a website suspected of downloading and installing
malware onto your computer.
