Google has always been conscious of internet security, they’re constantly tweaking Chrome and their searches to make sure you’re not hitting sites which could compromise your security. Today, Google has launched another tool in the war against scam artists, a Chrome extension which notifies you to change your password when you enter it into a phishing site.
A phishing site is a website which is essentially trying to masquerade as a legitimate website, a malicious person may develop a website which looks similar to a site you would normally go to, as well as acquire a similarly spelt domain name and attempt to capture your login credentials, opening you up to all sorts of vulnerabilities.
How effective is phishing? According to Google, effective phishing attacks get around a 45% success rate. Some of these phishing attempts even use Google’s own Gmail to attempt to ‘get’ you, with nearly 2% of messages to Gmail designed to trick you. But with this new Chrome extension, Google is hoping to fix all this.
Called Password Alert, the Chrome extension is free, and open-source, it stores a ‘scrambled’ version of your password – which is never shared – to check against sites you login to. If you hit a site which has been logged as a phishing site you get a large warning to change your password.
Not only is Password Alert available for Gmail users, in a change of pace for usual Google releases, the Chrome Extension can be used on ‘Google for Work customers, including Google Apps and Drive for Work’
This is another layer of security that Google offers, with Two-Factor Authentication, and physical security keys available as well. Try the Chrome Extension out now, it’s available for free on the Chrome Web Store.
