Lessons from Black October: Enhancing Online Safety

One significant take-away from Black October is the increasing danger of the internet. Users are exposed to website vulnerabilities, data breaches, and malicious webpages. To help combat these risks, there’s a powerful protection feature in Chrome that users should activate now.

Chrome holds the title of the most popular internet browser across the globe. With around 3.62 billion users, it remains a trusted gateway to the web. Yet, it’s also a prime target for hackers looking to exploit any weaknesses for their own benefit.

This underscores the importance of enhanced protection mode, which Google introduced to Chrome in 2020 and has been refining since. Recently, several new features were added to enhance your safety while browsing.

One of those features is the warning for suspicious sites. When Chrome identifies a potentially harmful website, it delivers one of two warnings.

The first warning, titled “suspicious sites,” may appear if Chrome suspects that the site might pose a risk. At this point, you have the choice to turn back to avoid the site or to proceed at your own risk.

The second warning, called “dangerous sites,” is more impactful. When Chrome is fairly confident that a site is risky, it presents an imposing bright red warning that states, “Attackers on the site you’re trying to visit might trick you into installing software or revealing things like your passwords, phone, or credit card numbers. Chrome strongly recommends going back to safety.” In this case, your only clear option is a button that returns you to safety, protecting you from potentially infecting your device.

When enhanced protection mode is switched on, users also benefit from added ClickFix safety measures. According to Google, ClickFix helps guard against social engineering tactics where scammers might attempt to convince you to copy and execute harmful commands under the guise of “fixing” a fake issue. For instance, if a scammer pretends to provide tech support over the phone and instructs you to run malicious code, Chrome can now help spot the harmful copied code and alert you before you proceed.

How to Enable Enhanced Protection on Chrome

You can turn on enhanced protection mode in Chrome, whether on your phone or via laptop or desktop. This setting syncs with your Google account so that any changes are applied across all your devices, provided you’re logged in. If you’re not, you’ll need to adjust the setting on each device manually.

To enable enhanced protection, open Chrome. This example assumes you’re using a mobile device. Tap the three-dot menu located in the upper-right corner of the screen. From the options, select “Settings.” Next, go to “Privacy and security” and then “Safe Browsing.” Here, you’ll see three distinct options:

• No protection: As indicated, this setting won’t shield you from online threats. Your browsing is vulnerable to malicious sites, harmful downloads, and other threats that could compromise your device.
• Standard protection: As Chrome’s default configuration, this mode helps protect your device against suspicious websites, downloads, and extensions.
• Enhanced protection: This setting uses Google’s advanced AI to analyze website data in real-time for online threats and applies to other Google apps and services, like Gmail.

Once you verify that enhanced protection is enabled, Chrome will actively monitor your browsing to keep you secure against dangerous sites and other vulnerabilities.