A study by Google has revealed that some people continue to use the same password for multiple Sites – a complete no no for Online security.
Some time ago, Google had announced the Password Checkup extension for Chrome to “help keep all your online accounts safe from hijacking.” The extension displays a warning whenever you sign in to a Site using one of over 4 billion usernames & passwords that Google knows to be unsafe due to a third-party data breach.
Since its launch, over 650,000 people had participated in an early experiment. In the first month alone, Google scanned 21 million usernames & passwords, & flagged over 316,000 as unsafe – 1.5% of sign-ins scanned by the extension.
The research further showed that users opted to reset 26% of the unsafe passwords flagged by the Password Checkup extension. About 60% of new passwords were secure against guessing attacks—meaning it would take an attacker over a hundred million guesses before identifying the new password, showed the study.
In a separate announcement, Google said it was releasing two more features for the Password Checkup extension. The 1st was a direct feedback mechanism where users can inform Google about any issues that they were facing via a quick comment box. The other gave users the option to opt-out of the anonymous telemetry that the extension reports, including the number of lookups that surface an unsafe credential, whether an alert leads to a password change.
Here’s how you may install the password checkup extension.
