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Senior Reporter, Work/Life
If you use Google Chrome as your web browser, you are familiar with the regular unwanted interruption of the browser needing to shut down to complete an update.
You may also notice these updates more because they often occur when you need them most not to happen ― like right before a work meeting or when you have a dozen tabs open for a brainstorm.
“A lot of our phone updates, like app updates, just happen quietly in the background while we’re sleeping. And we don’t even notice them anymore,” said Thorin Klosowski, a security and privacy activist for the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
In contrast, he said, Chrome updates cannot happen while we are sleeping and many of us leave our computers on all the time, so shutting down Chrome to relaunch the browser and complete the update is more of an “arduous process.”
But despite how annoying these updates are, you should not try to get out of doing them. The frequency of these updates is because web browsers are responsible for so much of our online behaviors.
Programs like Chrome are our “portal to everything” on the Internet, Klosowski said. They are how we stream video, read the news, chat with friends and co-workers. Each of those different activities “has its own set of possible concerns, compared to an app, which is doing basically one or two things most of the time,” which is why updates appear to happen frequently, Klosowski said.
Hackers know we’re using Chrome all the time, which is what necessitates so many updates to counteract potential security weaknesses.
“Chrome is one of the most widely-used browsers globally, making it an extremely attractive target for attackers,” said Truman Kain, an offensive security researcher at Huntress. “As you might expect with more hackers poking around, vulnerabilities are discovered more regularly, which means Google has to issue updates and patches more often than many other software providers.“
Klosowski said the latest Chrome update may or may not personally affect you, but the vast majority of them are “security patches that patch these little tiny holes that may or may not be exploited in the real world.”
You can see for yourself what exactly the latest public Chrome update is addressing by going directly to the source. Google shares posts about why they are doing their updates on https://chromereleases.googleblog.com/. You can see if Google awarded thousands of dollars to people who spotted and shared fixes to security or bug problems. For example, Google awarded $7,000 to someone for reporting a fix to a security issue that the March 10 desktop update addressed.
Klosowski said in general, the higher the reward amount, the more likely it was “a very big security problem.”
So the next time your web browser asks you to close out of your tabs so you can complete the update, do yourself and your computer a favor: Do it as soon as it is available.
If you are delaying an update because you fear losing your tabs, know that you can ask Google to save your Chrome tabs and reopen them upon restarting. To toggle this setting on, go to Chrome Settings, then select “On Startup.” Then you can choose the option to “Continue where you left off.“
Whatever you do, do not ignore the update prompts. Our web browsers store and track our more sensitive information, and the longer you delay security updates, the more likely you are putting your data at risk.
“When you get prompted to update, think of it like putting your seatbelt on before driving,” Kain said. “You could wait until you’re already on the road, but why leave yourself vulnerable even for a short time? All it takes is visiting one website that is exploiting a critical vulnerability for attackers to get onto your machine or steal your sensitive data.”
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