Google Improves Chrome's Built-in Protection for Phishing Attacks with New Extension • Latest News in the Business and Financial World

With security breaches happening more frequently, one would think hackers have developed some very complicated hacking methods. That’s not the case, as gaining illegal access to accounts still occurs a lot through simple phishing schemes.

We’ve heard it so many times, we started ignoring the warning: don’t ever click on any dubious links or pictures in emails and never ever type your account info into suspicious looking websites.

What hackers did instead is make their traps set in phishing emails look a lot more legit, thus more people are fooled, click and carelessly offering hackers their personal credentials on a plate. Controlling human error and stopping them from happening so often is tough, but Google has a new strategy for fighting that battle.

If you’re a Chrome user, you’re in luck. As of today, Google has launched a new extension that might help you avoid significant data loss. Called Password Alert, the tool can identify if you’re typing your Google password on any non-Google site.

How does it work? Password Alert is really living up to its name – an alert that’s prompted each time you type in your login details anywhere else other than on accounts.google.com, telling you that you might want to reset your password.

Now, you can choose to change your password on the spot with a new key, or you can ignore the warning in case you’re absolutely sure you’re not going to be hacked. For Gmail users, Google has also implemented a selective mute option for various websites.

After each successful log into your account, Password Alert receives temporary access to that password and saves it to Chrome’s local storage. Each time your enter a password on any non-Google websites after that, Password Alert does a quick comparison to the password it already saved on server.

It’s still bad news, however, since not even Password Alert can warn you before entering your password into a non-Google site, so the chances you can still be phished are pretty high. But hopefully, the alert can warn you right away, and you can change your password in a timely fashion, before any harm is done to your account.

Google is working on detecting fake Google sign-in pages and warning users before typing in credentials. Some pages, however, might still go pass its detector. According to PCMagazine’s recent test, Chrome is the best option for browsers that come with built-in phishing protection, seconded by Firefox.

In case you’re using the same password for more than your Google account, Password Alert will be useless to you – but you shouldn’t be doing that, anyway. The extension will allow users who have several Google accounts to use multiple Chrome profiles in order for Password Alert to work properly.
Image Source: Duo Security

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Christina Langfold

Remember that weird girl in school who never quite managed to fit in? Who was always silent and strange? That was me during my entire teenage life. A few years after finishing college (with a degree in arts) I decided that the best way to become more sociable, while also feeling safe, is to test my people skills online.