With the rise in malware and phishing attacks, data security has become a top concern for many people worldwide. Many of us have heard about data breaches, or even been a victim of phishing, where a site tries to fool us into entering passwords and other sensitive information.
Google has announced a new update for Chrome which will now tell you if your password has been stolen. Now, when you type your credentials into a website, Chrome will now warn you if your username and password have been compromised in a data breach on some site or app. Additionally, the browser will suggest that you change your credentials everywhere they were used.
Earlier this year, Google first introduced this feature under the Password Checkup extension. In October, it was introduced to your Google Account, wherein users were able to conduct a scan of your saved passwords anytime.
You can also control this feature in Chrome Settings under Sync and Google Services.
‘For now, we’re gradually rolling this out for everyone signed in to Chrome as a part of our Safe Browsing protections,’ Google said in a blog post.
Google’s Safe Browsing maintains a list of unsafe sites on the web and shares this information with webmasters, or other browsers, to make the web more secure. Google says, the list refreshes every 30 minutes and is protecting over four billion devices every day against all kinds of security threats, including phishing.
However, some phishing sites slip through that 30-minute window, either by quickly switching domains or by hiding from Google crawlers. And to provide a tighter grip on these sites, Chrome now offers real-time phishing protections on desktop, which warns you when visiting malicious sites in 30 per cent more cases. Initially we will roll out this protection to everyone with the “Make searches and browsing better” setting enabled in Chrome.
If you're signed in to Chrome and have Sync enabled, predictive phishing protection warns you if you enter your Google Account password into a site that Google suspected of phishing.
‘Now we'll be protecting your Google Account password when you sign in to Chrome, even if Sync is not enabled. In addition, this feature will now work for all the passwords you store in Chrome’s password manager. Hundreds of millions more users will now benefit from the new warnings,’ added Google.
