Google Rolls Out Enhanced Anti-Phishing Security Checks in Gmail for Android

Google on Wednesday introduced a new security feature for Gmail on Android that makes it easier for users to protect themselves against phishing attempts.

Starting this week, when you click a suspicious link in an email, Gmail will show a new pop-up warning explaining that what’s on the other side of the link might be dangerous, and you will be presented with the information below:

The site you are trying to visit has been identified as forgery, intended to trick you into disclosing financial, personal, or other sensitive information.

While users will still have the option to proceed to the website, Google hopes this warning will encourage users to be more cautious about what links they are clicking and where the link will take them.

While not all affected email will necessarily be dangerous, we encourage you to be extra careful about clicking on links in messages that you’re not sure about. And with this update, you’ll have another tool to make these kinds of decisions, Google writes in a G Suite blog post.

According to Android Police, feature appears to use Google’s Safe Browsing database, which catalogs sites known to host malware or trick users into giving away information.

We surely hope that due to today’s outbreak of a widespread phishing scams, this feature will surely help.

The feature is said to be gradual rolling out globally and may take a few days to reach everyone.

Notably, Google has been making a number of changes to its Gmail for Android since the beginning of this year. One of their recent updates is the Gboard keyboard GIF support feature. In order to add GIFs to emails, users simply need to head to the emoji section on the Gboard keyboard while composing a new message. The feature was already made for iOS users before it was revealed to Android users.[related-posts]

Editor’s Note: There was no mention/comment whether the feature will be available to other platforms.