Google Chrome 92 is rolling out later today with a number of enhancements such as Bluetooth device filtering, enhancements to PWAs, and deprecation of a payment handler configuration. Now, the company has detailed certain privacy- and security-related features that it is rolling out to Chrome today as well.
Chrome users may have noticed that some sites ask for extra permissions such as microphone and location. To allow you to keep track of what permissions a site is utilizing, you can simply click on the lock icon in the address bar which now shows an updated panel showing the permissions you have granted. You can toggle these permissions as well. Currently, this capability is only present on Android phones and tablets. Google says that future enhancements will also include the ability to delete the site from your browsing history.
Improvements are being made to Chrome Actions as well. For those unaware, this feature was introduced in Chrome 87 in November 2020, and enables users to perform actions such as deleting history or cookies right from the address bar of the browser. Today, it is getting new actions such as the ability to type "safety check" to validate the security of your passwords and scan for malicious extensions. Other actions include "manage security settings" and "manage sync".
Finally, on the security front, Google is expanding Site Isolation on Chrome. In-depth technical details can be found on the technical blog here, but in a nutshell, the capability isolates sites and extensions from each other so a malicious extension or site is not able to steal your data from another website. The feature is being expanded to cover more websites and extensions. The company has boasted that with new image processing techniques in Chrome, it has also made phishing detection 50 times faster with the process draining even lower battery than before. You can find out more details about this here.
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