These days, the number of data breaches that we’re hearing about seems to be on the rise, showing us that maybe it is time to retire the password or at least enhance it with added security like 2FA. We imagine that it could be a while before an alternative to the password becomes a thing, but in the meantime, Google wants to help.
According to a discovery by Techdows, they have found a commit in Chrome Gerrit in which it has been revealed that Google is working on a password leak detection feature for Chrome. What this feature does is that whenever you enter a password to log into a website, Google will check it against a database of public data breaches to see if it matches.
Should it detect that your account is one of those that has been breached, it will then show a popup letting the user know. At the moment, the feature doesn’t seem to be live or enabled by default yet. Instead, if users want to check it out, they’ll need to go to chrome://flags and search for “leak” which should bring them to “Password leak detection”, after which they can then enable it.
Note that it is currently an experimental feature which means that it could change in the future. Chrome would also not be the only browser to offer up the feature, where Mozilla’s Firefox Monitor also offers something similar as well. In the meantime, you can also check out our guide on how to choose a strong password.
Filed in . Read more about Chrome, Google, Hack and Security. Source: techdows