Google has released Chrome 83 today, May 19th, 2020, to the Stable desktop channel, and it includes massive security and privacy overhaul changes for its users.
With this release, users are getting a redesigned Privacy and security settings section, better control over cookies, a new Safety Check feature, improved DoH settings, and a new Enhanced Safe Browsing feature.
While Google fixes security vulnerabilities in every release of the Chrome browser, most of these security improvements are made behind the scenes.
With this release, Google Chrome 83 has completely overhauled the user-facing security protections with numerous improvements that aim to help users secure their data, stay safe online, and increase their privacy.
It is important to note that most of the improved security features will be rolling out to users over the next couple of weeks.
If you do not see them immediately, be patient as they will be eventually enabled in your browser.
Google rolls out new Enhanced Safe Browsing security feature
Today, Google has announced a new Enhanced Safe Browsing feature that will offer real-time protection against known malicious web sites and downloads.With today's release of the Enhanced Safe Browsing protection feature, Chrome users will now be able to get real-time protection when browsing the web and downloading files.
With this feature, when you browse a site or download a file, Chrome will share additional information with Google Safe Browsing so it can check URLs for malicious activity.
The use of this feature, though, does come with a small sacrifice in privacy as "Chrome will also send a small sample of pages and suspicious downloads to help discover new threats against you and other Chrome users."
Furthermore, states that if you are signed into Chrome and are using Enhanced Safe Browsing, the transferred data is linked temporarily to your Google account to detect if an attack if targeting your browser or account.
"If you are signed in to Chrome, this data is temporarily linked to your Google Account. We do this so that when an attack is detected against your browser or account, Safe Browsing can tailor its protections to your situation. In this way, we can provide the most precise protection without unnecessary warnings. After a short period, Safe Browsing anonymizes this data so it is no longer connected to your account," Google stated.
If you are willing to sacrifice some of your browsing data for a short period for better protection, then Enhanced Safe Browsing is an option that you should enable.
With today's release of Chrome 83, users can enable Enhanced Safe Browsing protection by going to chrome://settings/security and selecting it.
More intuitive privacy and security controls in Chrome
https://www.blog.google/products/chrome/more-intuitive-privacy-and-security-controls-chrome/