Safety Check

What the page shows

Open Settings → Privacy and security → Safety Check, or the address chrome://settings/safetyCheck. There is no button to start it: Sverk checks by itself, in the background, and the page shows the latest results.

At the top, under Safety at a glance, there are three cards: passwords, the Sverk version and Safe Browsing. Below, under Safety recommendations, is what waits for your decision: extensions that may be unsafe, and sites Sverk took permissions from. When there is nothing to decide, it says Nothing else needs your attention right now.

The Safe Browsing is off card is always there in Sverk. That is the name of Google's protection, which Sverk turns off on purpose, and settings offer no way to turn it on. The card opens the Security page, where Sverk describes its own protection — the next section.

Dangerous sites

Google Safe Browsing requires sending Google information about every page you go to, so Sverk does not have it. Instead, Sverk warns you before a site opens that is on the lists of:

• the Bank of Russia — companies showing signs of illegal activity on the financial market: financial pyramids, illegal lenders, unlicensed brokers;
• the financial regulators of Cyprus, France and the EU — sites without permission to operate on their markets;
• PhishTank — verified phishing pages that copy known sites to get hold of a password, a one-time code or card details.

The lists are kept and checked on the computer: the addresses you open go nowhere. Sverk fetches fresh lists from our server at launch, then from hourly to every five hours; only the blocker version, the system and the language leave the computer for that. The check is done by Sverk Shield, the blocker built into Sverk.

Instead of a listed site, a warning page opens: who listed the site and why, the date of the record and a link to the source. Go back leaves the page. Go there anyway opens the site, and Sverk does not warn about it again until the browser restarts. Turning ad blocking off for the site does not turn the warning off.

The lists are incomplete, and new phishing pages appear faster than any list is updated. No warning does not mean a site is safe: check the address in the address bar before entering a password or card details.

Passwords

The passwords card shows how many saved passwords appeared in breaches, are reused or are too weak; clicking it opens Password Checkup in the Password Manager. If it says "To check for compromised passwords, sign in to your Google Account", ignore that: Sverk has no Google sign-in, and it checks for breaches itself — the passwords article says how.

Extensions

The check flags extensions that may be unsafe, including ones not installed from the Chrome Web Store. Review opens the Extensions page, where they are gathered under Safety Check.

Sverk Shield, Sverk's built-in blocker, comes with the browser rather than from the store, so the check lists it too — marked On • Sverk can't verify where this extension comes from, with advice to remove it. Do not remove it: ad blocking and the dangerous-site warnings would go with it. To clear the mark, click ⋮ next to it and choose Keep this extension. Other extensions are covered in Extensions and the Sverk Shield blocker.

Site permissions

From sites you have not visited for 60 days, Sverk removes the permissions you gave them — the camera, microphone and location, for example. The permission to show notifications it removes from sites that send many notifications while you do not visit them. Such sites appear under Safety recommendations: Allow again gives the permissions back, and if you leave them, the site can ask again.

To turn this off: Settings → Privacy and security → Site settings → Automatically remove permissions from unused sites.

Updates

The version card says Sverk is up to date with the version number, and clicking it opens About Sverk. If an update has been downloaded and waits for a relaunch, it says Sverk is out of date: click the card to relaunch the browser, and your tabs reopen. Updates come from Sverk's own server; more in Updating Sverk.

Didn't find the answer?

Write to us at support@sverk.ai: what you did, what you expected to see and what you saw. Other topics are in the help contents.