Every now and then, you hear in the news about another massive breach of password information from one company or another. But it’s virtually impossible to keep up with exactly which account details have been stolen, and so which passwords you ought to be changing.
As of last week, Google’s making it easier for you to keep on top of the problem. The most recent update to Chrome includes a nifty feature to check it for you automatically.
Every time you type in a username and password, Chrome will securely check those details against any data breaches it knows about. And if it spots a match – it’ll pop up a warning message for you.
Don’t worry – Google doesn’t get to find out what your passwords are – it’s all done using some clever encryption at both ends.
If you do get a security message, you need to change your password on the website that you were trying to sign in to. You should also make sure you haven’t used that password anywhere else – and if you have, change it there too!
There’s a similar feature coming to the Firefox browser, too. And I wouldn’t be too surprised to find that Microsoft aren’t that far behind.
Android 10 might be coming to a smartphone near you…
Jess in the office got herself a fancy new smartphone the other month – the Samsung S10 5G. Anyway, she’s had a message asking her to update to the very newest version of Android – Android 10.
So if you’ve got a top-end Android phone, don’t be surprised if you get a similar message some time soon.
I wanted to mention it, because you might have heard that Android 10 will work a bit differently from earlier versions. Instead of the three buttons at the bottom of the screen for home, back and recent apps – you can use swipes and other gestures instead. Thankfully, though, you still get the option of using three buttons if you want to. When your phone updates, it doesn’t switch to “gesture nav” (as they call it) unless you ask it to. Phew!