However the Safe Browsing API also stores a cookie on the user’s computer which the NSA (US National Security Agency) uses to identify individual computers. This uses hashed URLs so the Google server never knows the actual URLs queried by the user. The Firefox and Safari browsers however use a second version of the API, Safe Browsing API v2, to exchange data with the server. This makes tracking your online activities ultra-easy. The URLs (addresses) to be look up are not hashed (encrypted) so the Google server knows which URLs have been looked up using this API. When using Google’s public API (the Safe Browsing Lookup API) to check out a suspicious webpage, members of the public who are concerned about their privacy need to be cautious. Privacy concerns with Google’s Safe Browsing service The service is acknowledged as being highly efficient in protecting users from malware and phishing attacks. More than one billion internet users are currently using the Safe Browsing service, either directly or indirectly and, according to Google, it is issuing three million warnings a week. In addition, Google uses its Safe Browsing service to send internet service providers e-mail alerts regarding threats hosted on their networks. Members of the public can also access the lists of unsafe sites via a public API for the service. The service is also designed to block the downloading of files infected with malware and, once a user’s computer has been infected, it can issue instructions on how to detect and remove the malware.

The warnings are display as ‘visual messages’ along with specific details relating to the malicious content concerned. The service issues alerts when they are about to open websites or content Google has classified as malicious. Lists from the Google Safe Browsing service are used by browsers such as Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and apple Safari for checking web-pages users are trying to access against potential threats. These lists of suspicious sites are continuously updated using Google’s web crawlers, programs that scour the web to index sites for Google’s search engine. Google Safe Browsing is a service through which Google provides lists of URLs (addresses) of websites that contain malware or phishing content.

Turn off safe browsing