Google announces changes to Chrome: This will affect us all

Google is developing a new feature to increase the security of your web browser. For a long time, Google Chrome prioritize secure connections while browsing. Chrome’s ability to load all pages via protocol by default HTTPS It was first presented with version 90. The browser switches to HTTP when the queried website does not support the secure protocol.

Improving security in Google Chrome

After a while, Google improved their system by adding a new “HTTPS Only” option. chrome 94. This last option, available in most web browsers, is designed to increase security while visiting. Internet restricting web pages viewed in the browser to those that conform to the HTTPS protocol.

As a result, when a website does not support secure browsing, the browser no longer automatically switches to HTTP. A warning page appears indicating that the user is about to load an unsafe web page. This stops the user where they are.

The change brought by the new browser update

According to code discovered by 9to5Google in the Chromium Gerrit repository, Google is preparing to expand its custom HTTPS module to include all file downloads. This is a collaborative platform for developers to review code in browsers. When Chrome detects that a file download is using the insecure HTTP protocol, it blocks it immediately.

Thus, this new option goes beyond what the browser currently offers as it affects a number of new cases. Downloads from a web page that is unsafe, uses non-secure redirects, or whose final URL is not HTTPS will be blocked by the browser. To complete the download of the requested file, It will always be possible to ask Chrome to remove this lock. Therefore, it will remain as an optional measure.

Currently under development, the experimental version of this new security feature will initially be available only in Chrome. For now, it will only work after you enable #block unsafe downloads from chrome:/flags. This is where all the experimental features are listed. latter, Should not be accessible before March 2023 release of Chrome 111.