You can never have too much security when it comes to the internet. So in this video,
I'm going to go over some security tips and settings for Google Chrome,
as well as other Chromium-based browsers and Firefox. Pretty much all the settings
are available in all of them. Some of these you may have heard me mention or knew about before,
but there's definitely a couple that you may have never even heard of before.
Anyway, let's just jump into it. First up, we have Enhanced Protection Mode. You can
get to this by going to the settings and then Privacy and Security, then Security,
and under "Safe Browsing", select Enhanced Protection. On Edge, you'll see the setting
it's called "Enhance your security on the web", and you can set it to strict.
On Firefox there's no setting like this, but there is a option for enhanced tracking protection of
third-party trackers. So you can select that to strict if you want to. Now each browser's
enhanced protection mode, if it has one, will differ slightly. On Chrome, you can see all
the things it does, but I would say the main benefit of having it is that it automatically
checks every website you visit against Google's Safe Browsing, and its latest up-to-date lists.
Whereas if you just use standard protection, my understanding is it downloads the latest
list of malware sites a couple times a day maybe. But these days, malware sites go up and
come down so quickly that hackers expect their websites to be caught very quickly. So they're
kind of planning to use these malware sites maybe only for a day before it gets caught.
So sometimes those offline lists, if it comes the next day,
that's too late. Whereas if you have this enhanced protection, it will check it
against the latest online list immediately. Of course, you might consider this a privacy
trade-off if it's sending every site you visit to Google to check, but that's your decision.
All that being said, of course remember that it's still not a guarantee. I previously made
a video talking about how to report malicious websites to get them taken down and blocked.
And the real scam site I used as an example was up for 10 days without being caught,
including by Google Safe Browsing. So being vigilant is always the key,
though it still is worth it, in my opinion, to add as much security as possible.
And actually a bit later, I'll also talk about the video sponsor Guardio,
which is another great way to fill security gaps like that, that aren't covered otherwise. Next up,
this is one that probably not a lot of people realize, and that's if you're
using Google Chrome and you want the latest update, like a patch for a zero day exploit,
yes you can just wait for the browser to auto-update, but you probably won't
get that patch as soon as you can, as if you were to go and manually check for an update.
The only way to guarantee that you're actually on the latest version of Chrome is to do a manual
update because Google does staged rollouts of auto-updates to users. Even though Google Chrome
does check automatically in the background for updates, they put people in different cohorts,
they're called. Which are basically groups that you're kind of randomly assigned, where after they
release a patch onto their servers, a small group of people will get it immediately on auto update,
but some people, a large group may get it days or even weeks later, which is stupid in my opinion.
And there is no setting or anything to tell Chrome, "No, I always want the latest update right
away." So you literally have to go to the About page or the Version Info page of Google Chrome,
and then it will always manually check for the latest update and bypass that staged
rollout thing. From my understanding, this is a Google Chrome specific thing.
I do not believe from what I've been told that Firefox does this, it gives everyone
the latest update right away. And I believe Edge and others probably do the same. Now,
one thing you could do on Google Chrome, if you don't really care about the startup page,
is to set the startup site to the About page in Google Chrome.
And that way, every time you start up the browser, it'll auto-check for an update. So
you can do that in the settings under on startup, and then it says "On a specific
page", and you can just set that to chrome://settings/help . Otherwise,
you may be at the mercy of whenever the auto update decides to get you the new version.
Now on the topic of Chrome security, we have a very relevant sponsor for today, Guardio. Guardio
is a browser extension that provides real-time protection from all sorts of threats while
browsing the web. For example, it blocks malicious sites using in-house custom developed methods for
detecting phishing and malware content, all before those threats even have a chance to do any harm.
Guardio has also added download protection to block malicious files,
even if you accidentally click to download them, like from fake sites for popular software,
or even malicious game mods. One of my personal favorite features is that it will warn you if
a website's domain has been registered very recently, which is a major red flag.
Guardio also scans your other browser extensions and alerts
you if there are any disguised malicious extensions installed, and disables them,
and they really know what they're doing. They even do original research on new attack vectors,
and recently published an article about hackers using paid ads on Facebook and Twitter to spread
malware, a technique they call "Malverposting", which Guardio can protect against, of course.
And I'll put a link to that article in the description if you want to check it
out. You can scan your browser for threats for free by visiting Guard.io/ThioJoe and
installing the extension, and you'll also get a free 7-day trial to their premium features,
such as real-time threat removal. So if you want a clean and secure browsing experience, again,
visit Guard.io/ThioJoe, link in the description,
and also check out their affordable premium plan for full protection.
And with all that being said, let's continue. All right, next up we have a setting that is
personally one of the first things I change on any web browser I install,
and that is to always have the browser ask to where I want to save a download. You
can usually search your browser settings for downloads, and it'll be somewhere in there.
And in Chrome, for example, it's called "Ask where to save each file before downloading".
And on Firefox, it's called "Always ask where to save files". And Edge
has a similar setting. The benefits of this should be pretty obvious,
but sometimes you don't necessarily want to just download everything into the downloads folder.
Like if you're downloading a document, maybe you want it to go right into documents instead
of having to worry about copying it. Or also, some browsers like Microsoft Edge,
if the web page initiates a download, even if you didn't necessarily want a download,
the browser will just automatically start it.
So this way, it'll just pop up an Explorer window and ask you where to put it,
and it'll probably just default to the downloads folder anyway. So you can just
click Save. It's not any more difficult. And then if you want to put it somewhere else,
that's how you do it. All right, next up we have the option to always use a secure connection.
For context, basically every website these days should support encrypted connection or HTTPS,
and it's really the exception if they don't, that's a very outdated website. But there
are some websites that they may support HTTPS, but if a user goes to the website,
it was default to not encrypted, and you probably want to use the encrypted version if it's there.
So that's basically what the browser will do with the setting. If it detects you're
going to an unencrypted website, it'll check if there is an encrypted version
and automatically go to it. I do know that if you visit a website
that doesn't support encryption at all, then it will obviously show a warning.
On Chrome, this setting is called "Always use secure connections",
and you can just search for it. On Firefox, it's called "HTTPS-Only Mode",
and I would just set it to always use it. Now for Edge to even enable the option,
you have to go into the Edge://flags menu and do a search for "Automatic HTTPS" and enable that.
And now the setting will show under Security, and it'll appear as "Automatically switch
to more secure connections with Automatic HTTPS". Now strangely,
it seems like you can't toggle it on, but if you click on the text here specifically,
it then turns on. I'm not sure what that's about, but that's how to do it.
Now speaking of encryption, next up we have encrypted DNS,
and pretty much every web browser these days has an option for that,
but it might not be on by default. If you're not familiar, a DNS service is basically what
the browser will use when you type in a website name. It will use that to convert
it to the IP address of the website that the browser can actually use for the connection.
But for the longest time, even if the connection to the website was encrypted,
so no one could see what you were doing, the connection to the DNS service was not,
which means that a ISP or whoever could snoop in and see what websites you're
trying to connect to. With encrypted DNS, this helps protects against that though.
In Chrome, you can get to this by going to Settings and then Privacy and Security and
"Use Secure DNS", and just make sure that's enabled. But be aware that by default,
I believe this will still use your internet service providers DNS servers, which may not even
support encrypted DNS. So you should probably use a third party DNS service that usually are better.
Chrome actually has some options built in right there that you can choose from. I would recommend
either Cloudflare or NextDNS. Though if you're someone who already configured third party DNS
at the router level, for example, obviously you don't want to do that here because that
would override that, but you probably already know that if you're that person.
On Firefox, you can find the same setting by searching for DNS over HTTPS, it's the same thing,
and just choose either Increased or Max Protection. And again, it gives you
a couple options you can choose from. Now speaking of encryption again,
here's another setting that probably very few have heard of, and that is Encrypted SNI.
This might have a few related names. One is SNI,
which stands for Server Name Identification. The other one, it might be called something like ECH,
which is Encrypted Client Hello. And basically what this does is prevents anyone from snooping
in and being able to see what website you're making an encrypted connection to, even though
they can't see what's going on inside it, they can at least see what you're connecting to.
And this is slightly different from DNS because DNS is basically looking
at the IP address, whereas this is like just connecting directly to the website,
but the privacy concern is the same. Now to enable this,
you need to go into some advanced settings. So in Google Chrome, you're going to need to go
into the Chrome://flags menu and then search for "Encrypted ClientHello", and then enable that.
And in Firefox, you need to go to the about:config menu and then click
Show All and search "ECHConfig" and then toggle the following to true,
by clicking the thing on the right. You want to do network.dns.echconfig.enabled. And then the
other one, network.dns.http3_echconfig.Enabled. Now for Edge, technically it does support this
encrypted client hello thing, but it's a bit complicated to enable.
First, you have to change your desktop shortcut to add the following parameter
to enable the feature. And if you don't use that shortcut,
it won't be enabled. I don't know why there's no way to toggle it permanently. Then you'll
also need to go into the flags and search for "Use DNS HTTPS ALPN" and enable that as well.
And now it'll work. Though for all that work, it's probably not worth it,
especially considering it's not really used much yet. The reason I believe this is not enabled
by default is because the specification is not finalized yet and not a lot of websites really
support it, there's very few. But I don't see a reason not to enable it because at
least you'll know if it does ever finalize, you won't have to remember to enable it.
It'll be good to go. And if a website does support it, you can still use it. And you can test to see
if this is working by going to a test page by Cloudflare. I'll put it in the description,
but basically you can see on the right, if it says Secure SNI and by default, it'll probably
say that it's not. But if you have the setting enabled and you're also using a DNS service
like Cloudflare or NextDNS that support it, it should show up as a check and working after that.
Though I will note for some reason, when I had my DNS set to Cloudflare, for whatever reason,
the page test wasn't loading, but it did when I used NextDNS. So I don't know why that is,
but you may notice that. Finally, this is one you should probably do every once in a while,
no matter what browser you have, and that's review what site permissions you have granted.
Chrome has a privacy section for this. And then in Firefox, it's under Privacy
and Security and then Permissions. But basically just look through here and
look at the various permissions and maybe see what websites have been granted that,
or you can choose to just not even allow websites to ask. For example,
I don't use notifications on Chrome, so I just don't even allow websites to even ask about it.
But you might also want to look at like the microphone and camera permissions and make
sure that there's no websites on there that, maybe you accidentally enable it at some point,
and you don't want them being able to see your camera or microphone.
And then you can do that for all the other permissions as well.
So at this point, your browser should be a bit more secure than it was before. Of course,
common sense is the biggest protection, so nothing is ever a guarantee. But of course,
don't forget about Guardio, today's sponsor,
which can also add important wider protection you otherwise wouldn't have. So be sure to go
to Guard.io/ThioJoe to scan your browser for threats for free. Link in the description.
If you think I missed any important security settings,
or there's a new one that maybe I didn't mention in this video,
be sure to let me know down in the comments and also check down there because maybe someone did
mention one that I didn't. If you want to keep watching, the next video I'd recommend is where
I talked about a secret dark mode for Chrome that doesn't just change the browser theme,
but also websites to dark mode, even if the website doesn't have a dark mode by itself.
So you might want to check that out. I'll put that link right there you can click
on. So thanks so much for watching and I'll see you in the next one.