Google Chrome to protect users from suspicious HTTP links, suggests report

According to a report by 9to5Google, Google is planning to introduce a security feature which will eventually block any insecure downloads which users might want to open through HTTP websites. It is noteworthy that over the last few years, the American browser was trying to make Chrome a secure platform by encouraging users to possibly use only HTTPS websites.

To recall, Google Chrome also blocks secure websites from using insecure web forms by default. It was recently witnessed that the technology giant created a new toggle feature under Settings to ‘Always use secure connections’. Once it is enabled, the browser would attempt to upgrade to the HTTPS version of websites, in case a user accidentally navigates to the insecure version. Additionally, if there is no secure version, the browser will display the users an on-screen warning while asking if they would like to continue or not.

Meanwhile, Voice. The tech giant has added a warning feature to it which will alert users about the incoming spam calls. This will help users avoid unwanted calls and help them not fall victim to potentially harmful scams. Google will use artificial intelligence (AI) to identify spam callers.

Google Voice is a service available to Google Account customers in the US and Google Workspace customers in Canada. Users get a phone number for calling, text messaging, and voicemail. It works on smartphones as well as computers.

The new feature was announced by Google in a Workspace blog update. “To help protect you from unwanted calls and potentially harmful scams, Google Voice shows a ‘suspected spam caller’ label on all calls that Google believes to be spam. Google makes this determination using the same advanced artificial intelligence that identifies billions of spam calls each month across Google’s calling ecosystem,” the company said.

Google says that the new spam calls label will appear on the incoming call screen as well as in the call history. Users will have two choices here. One is they can confirm a suspected spam call, which causes future calls from that number to go directly to voicemail and call history entries to be put in the spam folder. Second option is to mark a labeled call as not spam, after which the suspected spam label is never displayed for that number again.