Five Settings Every Android Phone Owner Needs To Check – Don’t Risk Ignoring Them

GOOGLE urges Android phone owners to check their privacy settings on Google Chrome.

The tech giant recommends taking a closer look at five settings that could protect you and make your life easier.

1

It’s very easy to check your Chrome settings from an Android phone or tablet, and it’s definitely worth the effort.

“You can improve your browsing experience with privacy settings,” Google said.

“Most of these settings are enabled by default, but you can disable them.”

To find your settings, first open the Chrome app.

Then, to the right of the address bar, tap More > Settings.

Now tap on Privacy & Security and then choose the feature you want to update.

Google Chrome privacy settings on Android

The first feature you want to look at is Preload pages.

This feature can make your web experience much faster, but it comes at the cost of privacy.

“Chrome speeds up browsing and searching by preloading pages it thinks you might visit,” Google explained.

“To do this, Chrome may use cookies, if you allow cookies, and may encrypt and send pages through Google to hide your identity from sites.”

The second characteristic of the note is called Do Not Track.

This feature is designed to flag websites that you do not want to track.

This isn’t watertight though: websites could still ignore the request.

But it’s a simple way to boost your online privacy instantly.

Third on the list is Clear browsing data.

It does what it says on the box: you can easily clear your browsing data from Google Chrome.

This includes websites you have visited or entries saved in web forms.

It is even possible to clear browsing data from specific periods. For example, you might only want to erase the past hour because you were looking for birthday gift ideas.

Fourth in Google Chrome’s privacy list is Safe navigation.

This is a very important feature as it can prevent you from falling victim to a dangerous website.

“Protects you and your device from dangerous sites: Get an alert whenever Chrome detects that websites you’re visiting might be dangerous,” Google explained.

“When you visit a website, Chrome checks it against a list of websites stored on your computer that are known to be bad.”

This could prevent you from falling prey to a scam or having your device infected with dangerous malware.

Finally, you will want to consider Access payment methods.

This is where you can see the payment methods you have saved for Google Chrome.

Saving payment methods can be a convenient way to speed up online transactions, but it naturally adds a privacy risk.

Luckily, you can make a special modification that might help.

“You can change your saved payment information so that it’s only saved on your device, and you won’t see your saved payment information on other devices,” Google revealed.

While it’s important to use the best privacy settings, remember that you’re never truly safe online.

Always be careful when using the web, do not transmit personal information without verifying that the recipient is legitimate and avoid clicking on unsolicited links or documents.

Featured image credit: Google / Unsplash / The Sun

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