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Google adds experimental setting to hide full URLs in Chrome 85 address bar

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Re: Google adds experimental setting to hide full URLs in Chrome 85 address bar

#5
So Chrome is only showing the domain part now? Just like Safari has been for a long time?

Personally I quite like it. From what I understand the main goal is to make phishing attacks more clear to the user, since this is ultimately only a thing the end-user can protect against. Removing the noise definitely helps for that.

Having had it like this in Safari for a long time, I must say I greatly prefer this over the older behavior---the only time I care about a full URL is when I select it to copy it.

Re: Google adds experimental setting to hide full URLs in Chrome 85 address bar

#6
post #2

Can see this being exploited in some fashion for phishing attacks..

Shouldn't it actually help, seeing as the domain name is the important part? Now users can't get tricked into interpreting the path as part of the domain name.

Re: Google adds experimental setting to hide full URLs in Chrome 85 address bar

#7
post #2

Can see this being exploited in some fashion for phishing attacks..

For phishing to work you need a similar domain if you want to maximize the conned people. Copying the path from the attacked website is the easiest part.

I can even argue that if you take away the path from the URL, then it's actually easier to spot a phishing website since all you see is the domain if you don't hover over the address bar.

Re: Google adds experimental setting to hide full URLs in Chrome 85 address bar

#9
A couple of Google Chrome devs talk about the issues surrounding the readability of urls and their security implications and possible solutions in an episode of their podcast[0]. I think they make a compelling argument for hiding most of the url in part to prevent phishing however I do think they should allow this behaviour to be toggled via a flag.

[0] https://youtu.be/0-wB1VY3Nrc

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