Phishing and other malicious sites often exist for only very brief periods. Previously, Chrome's Incognito and Guest modes relied solely on a locally stored list of dangerous URLs refreshed every 30 to 60 minutes to assess risk, leaving a notable protection gap. Google is now extending its Safe Browsing real-time verification mechanism to these two modes. The change applies to both the Standard Protection and Enhanced Protection levels. Rather than introducing a new protective feature, it reinforces the existing mechanism, enabling queries against more up-to-date threat intelligence and substantially narrowing the protection gap.
