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Google Safe Browsing
Service that warns about malicious URLs From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Google Safe Browsing is a service from Google that warns users when they attempt to visit a dangerous website or download dangerous files. As a core part of the service, Google maintains lists of URLs that contain malware or phishing content.[1][2] This protection works across Google products, and Google says it "power[s] safer browsing experiences across the Internet".[3] Google provides public APIs for the service.[4] Web browsers including Google Chrome,[5] Safari,[6] Firefox,[7] Vivaldi, and Brave use Google Safe Browsing to check pages against potential threats.[8]
Google uses its Safe Browsing data to notify webmasters when their websites are compromised by malicious actors and helps them resolve the problem.[3][9] Google also provides Safe Browsing information to Internet service providers by sending email alerts to autonomous system operators regarding threats hosted on their networks.[2]
As of September 2017, over 3 billion Internet devices used this service.[10] Alternatives are offered by both Tencent and Yandex.[11]
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History
Google started working on Safe Browsing in 2005 as anti-phishing software.[12] Early versions included a browser extension for Firefox and labels for potentially malicious websites in Google Search results.[12] Google released its first Safe Browsing API for third-party applications in 2007.[13] Google integrated Safe Browsing into Chrome in 2008 and into Android and Google Play in 2011–2012.[12]
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Privacy
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Perspective
Safe Browsing helps prevent users from getting tricked into giving significant personal information to attackers, which protects their privacy.[14] On the other hand, a person's web browsing activity and browsing history often includes personal and sensitive information, and services like Safe Browsing may expose some of that information to the operating company.[15][16] Google designed Safe Browsing with some protections for Internet privacy, and it has also been criticized and prompted to improve its approach to protecting user privacy over time.[17]
Google Chrome
In Chrome "standard protection" mode, Chrome checks parts of URLs that a person visits against Google's list of unsafe websites, using obfuscation and a third-party privacy-protecting server to minimize personal information shared with Google.[18] As of 2024, this mode uses Oblivious HTTP to hide user IP addresses from Google.[19] Chrome also checks visited websites for terms common on phishing websites.[18]
In Chrome "enhanced protection" mode, added in 2020, Chrome sends more information about visited websites to Google to enable detection of potential malware.[18][20] For example, in 2025 Google said that it added protection against technical support scams in this mode, using its Gemini large language model to help detect signs of this type of scam.[21]
Integrations in non-Google applications
Google offers several Safe Browsing APIs that third-party applications can integrate to help protect their users from dangerous websites. The Safe Browsing Lookup API, version 4, has a privacy drawback that remains as of 2025: "URLs are not hashed, so the server knows which URLs you look up."[22] In comparison, the Safe Browsing Update API, version 4, compares hash prefixes of URLs to improve privacy.[22]
Originally, most applications that used Google Safe Browsing APIs allowed Google to obtain the IP address of the user.[6] In 2021, Apple established a proxy to enable providing Google Safe Browsing to Safari users without revealing user IP addresses to Google.[6] As of 2024, Google offers a Safe Browsing Oblivious HTTP Gateway API that enables client applications, such as web browsers, to check whether a URL is on Google's list of unsafe websites without revealing the requester's IP address to Google.[23]
As of 2012, Safe Browsing stored a mandatory browser cookie on the computer for Safari users.[24] Google said that it used this cookie to monitor Safe Browsing service performance and detect issues, rather than to track users.[25]
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Criticism
In 2012, a security research company reported evidence that Google provided a more effective Safe Browsing service to Google Chrome users, compared to Firefox and Safari users.[26]
Websites that do not otherwise contain malware have been blacklisted by Google Safe Browsing due to the presence of infected display ads. Requesting removal from the blacklist requires the webmaster to create a Google Search Console account and wait several days for removal from the blacklist.[27]
There have also been concerns that Google Safe Browsing could be used for censorship, however as of 2016 this had not happened.[28][25]
See also
References
External links
Wikiwand - on
Seamless Wikipedia browsing. On steroids.
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