Google’s Android 17 Adds Privacy Protection for Website Names

Google’s Android 17 introduces a new privacy standard designed to protect the name of the website a user is opening. The change addresses a remaining part of a web request that can still travel in clear text: the site’s name. By scrambling that field, the feature limits the visibility of browsing destinations during the request process. However, the protection does not make browsing fully hidden, according to Decrypt’s report. The update therefore represents a targeted privacy change rather than complete browsing anonymity. The development is relevant to Google as the company continues updating privacy controls within Android, but the supplied information does not specify when the feature will be broadly available or how it will affect other parts of web traffic.