WORLDTECHChrome's Enhanced Protection to send clipboard content to Google's servers
Google is adding three Enhanced Safe Browsing Protection features to Chrome, as one outlet reports. One of them would let the browser send clipboard content to Google's servers in order to guard against social engineering scams.
What the new protections do
The reporting describes an expansion of Enhanced Protection in Chrome, a mode Google brought in more than five years ago, with three new features placed under Enhanced Safe Browsing Protection.
One feature lets the browser pass the webpages a user visits to Safe Browsing servers, with the aim of covering a wider spectrum of scams. The same settings also allow Chrome to transmit clipboard content to Google's servers, a step meant to defend against social engineering scams such as ClickFix, a malware deployment method.
A trade-off in privacy
The report characterises the changes as improving Chrome's scam protection while making it more intrusive. Under these settings, data that would otherwise remain on the device in standard mode would be sent to Google's servers for checking.
Open questions
- Which of the three features apply to users who have not enabled Enhanced Protection?
- How does Google handle the clipboard data it receives?