Phishing sites often use addresses that look almost right: “go0gle.com” instead of “google.com”, or a digit in place of a letter. Chrome 75 added a warning for exactly that. In Google’s words, “In Chrome 75, we’re launching a new warning to direct users away from sites that have confusing URLs.”
How the lookalike URL warning works
Google’s Chromium Blog explains that the warning compares the URL of the page you are on with URLs of pages you have visited recently. If the address looks similar enough that it might confuse or deceive you, Chrome shows a warning that helps you get back to the site you probably meant. The announcement was signed by Emily Schechter, Chrome Product Manager.
Google announced the warning alongside a new Suspicious Site Reporter extension. The extension lets you report dangerous or deceptive sites to Google Safe Browsing.
It started as a Canary experiment
Before it reached stable Chrome, the feature showed up in Chrome 74 Canary builds as an experiment called Navigation suggestions for lookalike URLs. Visiting an address like appl3.com produced a prompt under the address bar asking “Did you mean to go to http://apple.com/?”. To try it at the time:
- Install Chrome Canary and type chrome://flags in the address bar.
- Search for lookalike.
- Set Navigation suggestions for lookalike URLs to Enabled.
- Relaunch the browser when prompted, then type a domain with a deliberate typo to see the prompt.
A Chromium code review at the time suggested the warnings might later move to a full-page interstitial, like the one Safe Browsing shows for malicious sites.
What to do when you see the warning
- Read the address carefully, character by character. Look for swapped letters, extra hyphens and digits that look like letters.
- If the suggested site is the one you wanted, follow the warning’s link back to it.
- Never type a password or card details on a page you reached through a link you are unsure about.
- Report the page with Suspicious Site Reporter if you think it is a deliberate fake.
Report a deceptive site
Google released the Suspicious Site Reporter extension at the same time. It lets you report a page you think is dangerous or deceptive to Google Safe Browsing, the service that powers Chrome’s red warning pages. Google’s announcement says it does not think people should have to be security experts to feel safe on the web, and it asked power users who share that goal to install the extension and help by reporting suspicious sites. Each report helps protect other users once Safe Browsing confirms the site.
Keep Chrome up to date
The warning is built in, so there is nothing to switch on in a current Chrome. Make sure the browser is up to date: our guide on updating Google Chrome shows how. You can review what each website is allowed to do in Chrome’s site settings.
