Google is urging users to activate its Enhanced Safe Browsing feature via numerous alerts in Gmail that keep coming back, even after you acknowledge them.

The difference between the two security features is that Safe Browsing will compare a visited site to a locally stored list of domains, compared to Enhanced Safe Browser, which will check if a site is malicious in real-time against Google’s cloud services.

While it may seem like Enhanced Safe Browsing is the better way to go, there is a slight trade-off in privacy, as Chrome and Gmail will share URLs with Google to check if they are malicious and temporarily associate this information with your signed-in Google account.

  • thelastknowngod@lemm.ee
    1·
    1 year ago

    I still get nagged constantly to add a birthday to my Google account to make sure I am older than 13 or something… To satisfy some dumb law I think. The email account is like 15 years old though. How could I be under 13 if it’s that old?

  • forked_bytes@lemm.eeEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    there is a slight trade-off in privacy, as Chrome and Gmail will share URLs with Google to check if they are malicious and temporarily associate this information with your signed-in Google account.

    Yeah just a slight trade-off of sending Google every URL you visit.

  • 5453939160@feddit.de
    1·
    1 year ago

    But Google is already analyzing all emails received. So the only difference is that they actually know which links have been clicked.

    The privacy issue is Gmail, not that particular feature.

  • Duchess@yiffit.net
    1·
    1 year ago

    god, i hate this shit. i have a lot of stuffed tied to my google accounts but i think i’m at least going to switch email apps.

  • –Phase–@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    0·
    1 year ago

    The notification to enable enhanced safe browsing even shows up when you’re accessing Gmail on Firefox. It doesn’t even make any damn sense, this feature only works on Chrome. And of course they’ll never add a “don’t show again” option. Think I might just set Gmail to forward to my Proton account from now on.

    Edit: found an article on how to forward to ProtonMail in case anyone else wants to know how. Seems very easy to do.

    • Kikkertje@aussie.zone
      0·
      1 year ago

      I’ll keep Gmail for any shit I might want to sign up for and use ProtonMail as my serious email account.

      • Baggins@beehaw.org
        0·
        1 year ago

        Been doing this for a while now.

        I go back to Gmail every now and again to check if I’ve missed anything, it’s just a cesspool of junk and spam.

        Good to be away from it

  • alnilam@feddit.nlNederlands
    0·
    1 year ago

    “As Chrome and Gmail will share the urls with Google”.

    Chrome and Gmail are Google. You can replace this with “As Google and Google will share urls with Google” without any loss of accuracy.