One of the “Safety Check” features aimed at alerting harmful extensions users may have installed in Chrome browser is going to launch soon.
Three years back, Google launched the Safety Check feature in Chrome. The feature was designed to warn about password breaches, bad extensions, and Safe Browsing status when you run the tool here: Settings > Privacy and security > Safety check.
The security feature is also availble for Chrome on Android.
But, till now, never heard or seen, Chrome warning about harmful extensions. Seems the feature was not added to the Safety check with the initial launch, Google is working on adding an “Extensions module” to it.
Here is how the feature is supposed to work:
When you permit Chrome, it regularly checks and fetches metadata for installed extensions against extensions in the Chrome web store.
When you run Safety check, it provides a “Review” button, that navigates you to the chrome://extensions page and you can remove those that have been highlighted and taken down from Chrome Web Store.
Chrome provides a “Remove all” button.
As of now, the warning appears like this:
“Review extensions that were taken down from the Chrome Web Store. These extensions might be unsafe. Chrome recommends that you remove them“.
The feature is being still tested in Chrome 116 Canary, here is how you can enable it.
How to Enable Safety Check for Extensions in Chrome
- Visit chrome://flags,
- Type “Extensions” and Press enter to search
- Find and enable the following flags
“CWS info Fast Check”
“Extensions Module in Safety Check”
- Restart Chrome
Click on the 3-dot menu and select Settings, run the Safety check tool available under Privacy and Security.
As of now, it may not trigger the review button even if you’ve dangerous extensions, navigate to the chrome://extensions page to see the notice with the Remove all button.
Note: Safety check is a built-in on-demand scanner in Chrome. It won’t send data to Google unless you run it.
Summary:
Soon, when you run Safety check in Chrome, it checks your installed extensions metadata against unsafe extensions that were pulled from Chrome Web Store and asks you to review and remove such extensions.
