• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, December 7, 2015

Google has enabled its Safe Browsing technology by default on Android to protect mobile Chrome users from accessing phishing sites and Web pages infected with the ability to spread malware.

This Safe Browsing client on Android now is part of Google Play Services. Chrome now warns users about dangerous sites, and does this while preserving privacy similar to desktop search.

It's more difficult to keep a long list of potentially harmful sites on a mobile device than on the desktop, explains Noé Lutz, Nathan Parker, Stephan Somogyi; Google Chrome and Safe Browsing Teams in a post. With the data compression service, all the unencrypted Web traffic is routed through Google’s servers, where the technology verifies the URLs against a blacklist.

"The Android platform and the Play Store have long had protection against potentially harmful apps,' explains the Google team."And as our adversaries have improved their skills in trying to evade us, we’ve improved our detection, keeping Android app users safe. But not all dangers to mobile users come from apps."

Google says that social engineering, described as the ability to act, or look and feel like a trusted entity such as a bank or government, requires different protection. Providing this protection on a mobile device is much more difficult than on a desktop system, in no small part because we have to make sure that list doesn’t get stale.

The content tries to trick the user into doing something they would only do with a trusted site such as sharing a password or calling tech support.