The Global Anti-Scam Alliance calculates that consumers handed over more than $1 trillion to fraudsters last year. Google’s new Fighting Scams in Search report, explains that its search engine now blocks hundreds of millions of dodgy pages every day. Group product manager Jasika Bawa says the company’s language models spot patterns in text and layout, stripping away disguises that once fooled older filters.
After Google retuned its classifiers, scam results linked to flight bookings dropped by 80%. The engineers call it a cat-and-mouse contest in which crooks study each defence and then tweak their traps to avoid detection.
The average malicious site stays online for less than 10 minutes, according to Google’s security team. That fleeting life span demands protection that can judge a page the instant it loads, instead of waiting for a central blacklist to refresh.
What Does Chrome’s New On-Device AI Do?
Google’s answer is Gemini Nano, a trimmed down language model that lives on the user’s phone or laptop rather than in the cloud. In Chrome’s Enhanced Safe Browsing mode, the model examines a webpage as soon as the address opens. If it looks like the familiar tech support hoax… a fake warning, a countdown clock, a phone number in bold red… Gemini Nano tells Safe Browsing to raise a red banner. The user can back out with one tap or take the risk and proceed.
Running the scan locally keeps private data off Google’s servers and adds speed. Bawa argues that the local check “analyses threats exactly as users see them,” blocking pages that disguise themselves from web-crawling bots. Enhanced Safe Browsing already halves the risk of phishing when compared with Chrome’s standard setting, and Google believes Gemini Nano can push that figure lower.
Google will ship the feature to Android first, where phone browsers generate most website notifications. Testing on desktop platforms is underway, but the company has not named a date for release.
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How Does Gemini Nano Work In Practice?
Gemini Nano hunts for playbook cues that con artists reuse. A favourite move is to freeze the screen with a fake virus alert and demand an urgent phone call. When those hints appear, the model judges intent, not just layout, then passes its verdict to Safe Browsing without sending the whole page to Google’s servers.
Because the check runs in real time, it catches pages that hide their true design from automated crawlers, a ruse known as “cloaking.” Phiroze Parakh, Senior Director, Engineering of Search says this tactic rose drastically last year, prompting Google to bring AI right into the browser window.
The same model is learning to flag scam notifications. If a site bombards an Android user with misleading popups, Chrome will now offer an instant unsubscribe button, keeping the interruption brief and the choice in the user’s hands.
Where Else Is Google Using AI Defenses?
Search is the first line of protection, where Google credits newer language models with more blocked scam pages since it began using AI for that task 3 years ago. Those models read stretches of the web, spot coordinated campaigns and quarantine scam networks before a victim even clicks a link.
On Android phones, the Phone and Messages apps now watch calls and texts for shady behaviour. If a conversation starts to match known fraud scripts… fake parcel fees, bogus toll charges… the screen flashes a discreet warning. Because the analysis happens on the handset, no call content leaves the device.
Chrome’s next target is the flood of fake parcel updates and toll-road fines that arrive through push notifications. Google says Gemini Nano is already training on those patterns. The plan is to extend the same on-device shield to every type of scam that relies on speed and shock tactics.
Google is not alone in this fight, because also O2’s “Daisy” chatbot wastes scammers’ time on the phone, while Microsoft pilots a tool that listens for fraud clues during calls. Still, Google is essentially the most popular of many online journeys, and its decision to place AI directly inside the browser and the phone changes the way everyday users meet the web. Instead of waiting for a blacklist, the defence now travels with the person who needs it… quiet, quick and ready to pull the plug before money or data slip away.
