Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Google is launching a new security feature for Chrome on Android.
- The feature is designed for users who enable notifications on websites.
- This feature uses AI to warn you if a website notification is malicious, spammy, or misleading.
You may not notice it, but Google’s browser is fitted with all kinds of security and privacy features to protect you while you jump from website to website. Some examples include Safety Check, Enhanced Protection Mode, Password Manager, and so on. Now the company is rolling out a new security feature on Chrome for Android.
When you use Chrome, some websites will ask if you’re interested in enabling notifications. This allows web apps to act more like native apps on your device. Website notifications can be helpful if you want to be alerted to something, like a newly published story. However, sketchy websites can also misuse this functionality to send you malicious, spammy, or misleading notifications.
If you’re someone who likes to use website notifications, you’ll soon have a way to protect yourself from these malicious alerts. Google has announced it is rolling out a Gemini Nano-powered tool to fight against unwanted notifications on Android.
This tool will use Chrome’s on-device machine learning model to detect iffy notifications. If the alert is deemed suspicious, the tool will send you a warning. This warning will give you the option to either unsubscribe or view the blocked content. You’ll also have the option to allow future notifications from that website if the alert was flagged by mistake.
In addition to web notification warnings, Google announced it plans to expand Enhanced Protection Mode to Android devices. This mode is also being improved to weed out more types of scams other than phishing.
