The web is a dangerous place, and everyone needs to know that. While there are tons of good things you can find, the bad ones are lurking with their malicious deeds.
As the search engine giant and also one of the biggest online services of the web, Google wants to help eliminate these malicious and sketchy sites that pose danger to users. To do this, the company introduces a Chrome extension called 'Suspicious Site Reporter'.
The extension wants to help web users to stay away from sites that might steal their data or financial information, by crowdsourcing a list of malicious websites through user reporting, in order to keep their information safe.
What it does essentially, is allowing users of the extension to report any website the think and find malicious, with just a click of a button.
Google has what it calls 'Google's Safe Browsing'. But the feature can only work if it knows what websites to protect users against, which is why the tech giant is encouraging users to report suspicious sites.
The Chrome extension gives users a quick way to let Google know if a website looks suspicious. After a user reports a site as suspicious, the extension can create a screenshot of the site, its IP address, and also its HTML content, to then send the report to Google.
Upon receiving the report, Google will see for itself whether the site is actually unsafe.
If it is really unsafe, Google will add the site to its Google Safe Browsing list so other Suspicious Site Reporter extension users can see a warning when visiting that particular site.
The warning comes in the form of an orange flag that appears right next to users other extensions.
According to the extension's page:
"With the Suspicious Site Reporter extension, you’ll see an icon when you’re on a potentially suspicious site, and more information about why the site is suspicious. Click the icon to report unsafe sites to Safe Browsing for further evaluation."
According to Internet Live Stats, there are about 200 million active websites. The Suspicious Site Reporter extension however, flags things it considers questionable, including when a site is not on top 5,000.
Users of the extension visiting sites that are ranked lower will see a flag, as these sites are considered trivial, which in fact, aren't always true.
This is why In the announcement, Google said that the extension is for "power users".
Google is also rolling out a feature in Chrome 75 that can also warn users when they're visiting a site with a suspicious URL. The company said it can do this by comparing the URL of the page with URLs of the site users have recently visited.
These two Chrome features should come in handy for safe browsing, and they can also help others from falling prey to scam sites.