Google has made it safer for Android users to browse the Web, as long as they use Chrome to do so. This is because the latest update to Chrome for Android enables Safe Browsing mode by default. Which should prevent Chrome for Android users accessing known phishing sites and encountering malware.

Safe Browsing has always been a feature on the desktop version of Chrome, and has been available as an opt-in feature for mobile users since 2013. However, Google has resisted enabling it by default until now because of the amount of data involved. The company has now found a way of sufficiently compressing the data so that Safe Browsing can be enabled by default.

Anyone with Chrome for Android version 46 or version 47 should be protected by default. To make sure this is the case click on Settings, and then Privacy, and ensure the Safe Browsing option is ticked. You can also visit Google’s Safe Browsing test page to ensure everything is working as it should be.