In the latest version of Chrome for PC, Android, and iOS, Google has updated the standard Safe Browsing mode to check sites using a real-time security protocol. This is stated in the company’s blog post.

Prior to this update, the browser automatically flagged potentially dangerous sites and files together through the Safe Browsing feature, which detects thousands of dangerous sites every day and adds them to lists.

For privacy and performance reasons, the browser first checked the sites users visit against a stored local list of known dangerous sites that is updated every 30-60 minutes – this is done using hash-based checks.

This approach was not very safe, as many malicious sites exist for about 10 minutes. This was enough time for users to switch to a similar site and become victims of malicious activity by the time the local list of known dangerous sites was updated.

With the update, Chrome will check the list stored on the server. It can include dangerous sites as soon as they are detected, without having to wait 30-60 minutes for the local list to be updated on the user’s device.

Chrome already had an advanced security feature, but it wasn’t enabled by default because it collected data about the sites users visited. With improved standard protection, all user data will remain completely confidential.

According to the company, the secure browsing feature only sees the hash prefixes of your URL, not your IP address, and the privacy server sees your IP address, but not the hash prefixes.

In this way, neither party has access to your identity nor to the hash prefixes, and thus user activity in the browser remains confidential.