Google announces Password Checkup extension for Chrome browser

Google has announced a new Chrome extension called Password Checkup, which will help protect accounts from third-party data breaches.

There’s also a new feature called Cross Account Protection, which will keep one’s Google account safe, even if they have used it to sign into a third-party app or service and later this faced a data breach.  Google made the announcements in an official blog post.

Google Password Checkup

With the Password Checkup, which is a Chrome extension, if Google detects that a username and password on a site used by the account holder is among the 4 billion credentials, which are known to have been compromised, then the extension will flash a warning.

It will also suggest that the user should change their password given this account or password was likely compromised.

Google claims Password Checkup ensures that no one, including the search giant, can get the account details of the years. The blog post says the company developed “privacy-protecting techniques with the help of cryptography researchers at both Google and Stanford University.”

The Password Checkup extension will be getting refined in the coming months, and Google says this is the first version. Those who want to try it out can install the extension from the Chrome web store.

Cross Account Protection

Cross Account Protection will protect your Google account information when a third-party site or app gets compromised. Sites or apps which choose to implement this will get information from Google about security events, like an account hijacking to help protect user.

Google says they will only share with the app or site the fact that a security event has happened, basic information like whether the account was hijacked, or if Google forced the user to log back in because of suspicious activity. This is only shared with apps where you have logged in with Google.

The blog post notes, “We created Cross Account Protection by working closely with other major technology companies, like Adobe, and the standards community at the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and OpenID Foundation to make this easy for all apps to implement.”

All app developers using Firebase or Google Cloud Identity for Customers & Partners, will find that Cross Account Protection is included by default.