Fewer than one in three Chrome users have ‘Enhanced Security’ enabled

Google said that over a billion Chrome users are using Enhanced Protection mode, which provides real-time AI-powered safeguards against dangerous online content. However, this means that almost 2.5 billion other Chrome users haven't enabled the feature.

Google Chrome, the dominant web browser with an estimated 3.45 billion internet users, has offered advanced protection features since 2020. Yet it seems that it still hasn’t been discovered by the majority of people.

“To better protect yourself – and others – from phishing, scams, social engineering, and malware, enable Enhanced Protection on Chrome and on your Google Account,” Google urges.

The tech giant estimates that enabling this simple setting makes users “twice as safe from phishing and other scams when compared to Safe Browsing’s Standard Protection mode.”

Enhanced Safe Browsing protection warns about dangerous sites, performs in-depth scans for suspicious downloads, protects across Google services, notifies when a password has been compromised in a data breach, and protects against dangerous extensions.

It has some costs related to privacy because the feature needs to send visited website addresses, samples of page content, downloads, extension activity, and system information to Google. It is required for Safe Browsing to check if the content is harmful.

“If you turn on Enhanced Protection, much of the additional protection you receive comes from advanced AI and machine learning models designed to spot dangerous URLs engaging in known phishing, social engineering, and scam techniques. These models are trained to distinguish between real and malicious websites based on millions of real-world examples,” Google explains.

The tech giant assures that privacy is protected because the data in transit is anonymized “whenever possible,” used only for security purposes, and retained only “as long as necessary.”

To enable Enhanced Safe Browsing on Chrome, go to Settings, select Privacy and Security, choose Security, and then select Enhanced Protection.

For your Google Account, enable Enhanced Protections by following Google’s instructions: go to Google Account, select Security, scroll to Enhanced Safe Browsing for your Account, select Manage Enhanced Safe Browsing, and turn the Enhanced Safe Browsing on. This will sync the settings between the devices you’re signed in with your account.