If you stumble upon a suspicious website when web browsing on Chrome, you can now easily report it. Google has made the process for reporting a potentially problematic website very straightforward. What type of website might you want to report? Typically, these include phishing websites, malware-infested sites and the like. Once Google has reviewed your report, it will block the website for all Chrome users.
How do I report a website to Google? You will need to download a new extension for Chrome for that, and we will describe the steps you need to take for that in detail below. The new official browser extension will report inappropriate websites to Google Safe Browsing. Besides Chrome, this service is used by Apple Safari and Mozilla Firefox to locate and block malicious websites. Here’s how it happens: whenever you visit a website, your browser will run it against the list of reported “bad” websites. If the website is flagged, a warning message will pop up on your screen.
Previously, you could report suspicious websites via Google’s Report Phishing Page form where you had to enter the address for the malicious site. This is still an option — but you can do the same much faster if you download the new extension.
How to report an inappropriate website in Chrome?
First, you will need to download the new extension. Here’s how to do that:
- Go to the Chrome Web Store.
- Find and install the Suspicious Site Reporter extension.
- Once the new tool is installed, you will see it as a flag icon in your toolbar.
Where to report online scams, spam and phishing websites? You can simply click the flag icon, and the “bad” website will be reported to Google Safe Browsing.
The new extension was released on June 18 this year as part of an organized campaign aimed at reducing the number of deceptive websites in Chrome.
You will have several options as to how to report the website:
- Share a screenshot of the page
- Share DOM (Document Object Mode) content, which means all HTML of the site
- Share the referrer chain: this will show how you came to visit the website in the first place
There are two obligatory pieces of information to include in the report: the URL of the website and your IP address.
Once Google receives your report, it will review your submission and block malicious websites to prevent them from harming other users.
Safety on the web is very important for a good browsing experience — but you should also take steps to protect your personal computer from potential invasions. A program like Auslogics Anti-Malware will run regular scans of your PC and locate even the rarest malicious items hiding on your computer. The software will then get rid of the dangerous files before they manage to cause harm to your system.
Have you ever reported a suspicious website when browsing? Share in the comments below.
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