Google Chrome’s Safety Check feature lets you check your online security in seconds. While protecting your digital privacy is a good idea, protecting your digital security is more important. It’s easy to miss a vital security update, and passwords can become compromised. Safety Check ensures you keep your browsing secure by helping you resolve these problems.
We explain what Safety Check does, how to run it, and what to do with the results. You can run a Safety Check on the Chrome web browser or Android app. It’s the perfect companion to safe browsing whether you’re on your phone or one of the top-performing Chromebooks.
What does Google Chrome’s Safety Check do?
Safety Check covers three aspects of internet security. Running a Safety Check will:
- Check for the latest security patches and updates.
- Detect compromised, reused, and weak passwords.
- Adjust safe browsing settings to protect against dangerous websites, downloads, and extensions.
While there are further steps you should take to secure your browsing, like using a VPN, a Safety Check highlights immediate problems in your online security. Once you’ve run a Safety Check, you can quickly resolve any identified problems.
How to run a Safety Check on desktop
A Safety Check can be run on your desktop regardless of your device. Running a Safety Check on the desktop browser will also check for harmful extensions.
- Open Chrome.
- Click the three-dot button in the upper-right corner of your screen.
- Click Settings from the drop-down menu.
- Click Privacy and security from the toolbar on the left of your screen.
- Click the blue Check now button underneath the Safety check heading.
Each section of the Safety Check can now be expanded for further details on potential security breaches.
How to run a Safety Check on mobile
Whether you’re running a Safety Check on Android or iOS, these steps are identical.
- Open Chrome.
- Tap the three-dot button in the upper-right corner of your screen.
- Tap Settings from the drop-down menu.
- Scroll down and tap Safety check under the Basics heading.
- Tap Check now in the lower-right corner of your screen.
Once Chrome has finished the Safety Check, tap each section for a detailed report on improving your browsing security.
How to improve your security after a Safety Check
A Safety Check doesn’t automatically fix problems; it merely informs you of what you need to do. So after you’ve run your check, follow these steps to resolve any problems.
- Update Chrome to the latest version. This is the easiest problem to resolve. You can manually update Chrome to benefit from the latest security patches by following our guide.
- Change your passwords. Tap the Passwords section of Safety Check to see a breakdown of your passwords. Safety Check highlights compromised, reused, and weak passwords. We recommend changing any passwords highlighted here in that order by following these steps for a strong password.
- Change your Safe Browsing settings. Safe Browsing is a part of Google’s Advanced Protection program. It protects you from dangerous content on the internet. We recommend changing your Safe Browsing setting to Enhanced Protection for maximum security.
Browse the internet safely and securely
Online security should be foremost in your mind when using Google Chrome, but there’s much more to the web browser than security and privacy tools. There are plenty of handy tricks hidden under the hood that can help you maximize your productivity or browse with minimal hassle.
