Talk:Google Safe Browsing

Privacy?

Isn't this an enormous invasion of the user's privacy? I haven't looked into it, but I read this and I'm surprised nothing about privacy is in the article or even on this Talk page... --82.170.113.123 (talk) 23:57, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

Quotes:

"It's a time capsule on anyone who ever did anything in Chrome or Firefox ... they can be de-anonymized way after the fact, months or years after using those browsers and the settings are turned off," Hansen says.

And the cookie can be used to identify the IP addresses he or she visits, for instance.

"Ultimately, any time they store any kind of information on the browser and echo it back to the Internet, there is a potential leak of user's privacy."

But a Google spokesperson said IP addresses and cookies are not combined with data from other services, nor used for tracking. "All such data is deleted after two weeks" and not anonymized, the spokesperson said.

This article is awfully written. It just doesn't make any sense. There is no risk analysis, nothing. Only a bunch of words. Could as well be the words of a politician!

And yes, we need a section on privacy here. --WPcorrector (talk) 05:34, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

Section started J05HYYY (talk) 01:50, 13 June 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for starting this important section. It would be interesting to specify which implementations use the API in such a privacy-invasive way. Mozilla Firefox for instance doesn't seem to tell Google about the visited websites, instead it queries a local database: (I don't know how up to date those articles are, but I still see relevant configuration settings in about:config for Firefox 53.0.3). The option to query Google for every URL was removed in Firefox 3, AFAICT. --Nemo 11:58, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

There's been some research on the privacy of Safe Browsing independent of Google such as this paper. It would be great if this section drew more on independent research rather than Google's own claims. --Suhacker256 (talk) 18:22, 21 October 2021 (UTC)

Listing of google.com on Safe Browsing

Google's own results for google.com and their lack of being therefore listed as suspicious seems, well, suspicious

What is the current listing status for google.com?

   This site is not currently listed as suspicious.

   Part of this site was listed for suspicious activity 20 time(s) over the past 90 days.

What happened when Google visited this site?

   Of the 1389615 pages we tested on the site over the past 90 days, 1198 page(s) resulted in malicious software being downloaded and installed without user consent. The last time Google visited this site was on 2013-11-27, and the last time suspicious content was found on this site was on 2013-11-27.

   Malicious software includes 248 trojan(s), 243 exploit(s), 126 scripting exploit(s). Successful infection resulted in an average of 5 new process(es) on the target machine.

   Malicious software is hosted on 175 domain(s), including earnmoneydo.com/, gilmoregirlspodcast.com/, markforge.biz/.

   121 domain(s) appear to be functioning as intermediaries for distributing malware to visitors of this site, including journaldugeek.com/, x-cornerz.com/, thepullbox.com/.

   This site was hosted on 3 network(s) including AS15169 (GOOGLE), AS43515 (YOUTUBE), AS1221 (TELSTRA).

Has this site acted as an intermediary resulting in further distribution of malware?

   Over the past 90 days, google.com appeared to function as an intermediary for the infection of 61 site(s) including carleton.ca/, realmomkitchen.com/, bit.ly/.

Has this site hosted malware?

   Yes, this site has hosted malicious software over the past 90 days. It infected 33 domain(s), including joomfa.org/, burguscircus.free.fr/, philkearnycwrt.org/.

-- comment of 50.133.134.194 made on article instead of discussion page --WPcorrector (talk) 04:49, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

Neutrality of "Privacy" section

Hi @Theanswertolifetheuniverseandeverything, I did some work recently to try to make this article much more specific, accurate, and balanced, including the privacy section. What were your neutrality concerns that led to rewriting it? I believe it's more balanced to integrate both positive and negative perspectives about Google Safe Browsing's impact on user privacy. I also believe that in a "Privacy" section (rather than a history section), it's helpful to be very clear upfront about what the current default behaviors are, rather than the original behaviors, and to distinguish between behavior in Google Chrome and other browsers. The revised version also has a fair bit of passive voice. Dreamyshade (talk) 23:55, 28 October 2025 (UTC)

1. I think explaining the privacy benefits that arise directly from the purpose of the tool is unnecessary for the privacy section. It is very obvious what the purported benefits are. At the same time, it feels like something out of a Google press release. I realise that latter sentence is dubiously important, but it’s the best way I can phrase it right now. In general, explaining the trade-off in loose terms at the beginning is something I don’t like. It can contribute to giving a false sense of balance. I prefer stating the actual criticisms and actual policies introduced.
2. I believe Google Chrome is of secondary importance to the Safe Browsing API offered generally. Chrome-specific features are mostly unrelated to this article. That’s why I removed the details on that and moved Chrome further down.
3. I think it’s important to present criticism first and Google’s response later, as this is what seems to have actually happened. Presenting it in another order makes it look like Google’s responses to criticism were in fact forward-thinking privacy improvements.
4. Phrases like “to improve privacy” and ”a third-party privacy-protecting server to minimize personal information shared” and “prompted to improve its approach to protecting user privacy” are very imprecise and unclear. I believe that my text communicates enough for the reader to understand that. Using the vague words directly runs the risk of hiding details that diverge from the most common interpretation of the vague words.

Anselm Schüler (talk) 14:59, 10 May 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for explaining your perspective! Here are my thoughts:

1. It's important to consider the audience as described at Wikipedia:Writing better articles#Provide context for the reader, including using plain language and stating the obvious (WP:OBVIOUS), to better serve readers who don't have a lot of technical expertise. I cited secondary sources in the summary paragraph, including to avoid simply repeating Google press releases. The current version is unbalanced because it does not summarize much of the positive coverage in secondary sources, mostly the negative coverage.
2. The article is about the Safe Browsing service in general, and Google Chrome is the most prominent implementation of the service. It is also important to clearly distinguish between the Chrome implementation and the API implementation because they have different privacy characteristics.
3. Wikipedia:Summary style says "Sections that are less important for understanding the topic will tend to be lower in the article, while more important sections will tend to be higher, except for articles on history or that are otherwise chronologically based, unless there is some type of analysis section." The history section should be chronological, but the sections about themes don't need to be presented chronologically. As part of this, the material in the criticism section should be better integrated into the other sections (WP:STRUCTURE).
4. I'd encourage working to make the text more specific instead of replacing it. The revised version loses some of the specificity of the previous version in other ways. For example, this sentence is confusing: Google now offers the "Update" API in addition to the "Lookup" API, using which the browser supplies part of a cryptographic hash of the URL in question, and Google responds with a set of matching URLs in its database.

Dreamyshade (talk) 05:49, 23 June 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply.

I am currently not interested in writing an updated version. Feel free to write a version that strikes the best balance between my opinion and yours in your estimation. Anselm Schüler (talk) 01:20, 14 July 2026 (UTC)