Google Releases Password Checkup Extension to Help You Protect Your User PasswordsGoogle launched an active checker of passwords in the Chrome extension type. The tech giant says they’re not putting the data at risk nor getting to know what you’re inputting. Extensions like Password Checkup are a step in the right direction but ultimately it’s all about trust. Google has just released a new Chrome browser extension called “Password Checkup,” which is dedicated to helping users stay safe from taking over account. The extension tests if any of the data breaches known to Google have compromised the passwords entered by users to log-in to various online sites, and if they turn out to be the user is asked to change their password. With the help of cryptography experts at Stanford University, Google built Password Checkup. The tech company also tells us that the way they develop their extension does not allow them to get to know your credentials or even risk leaking them. First of all, Password Checkup focuses only on looking up the usernames and passwords entered so it can’t alert you about other data leaks that apply to email addresses or phone numbers etc. The extension views usernames and passwords as couples so it won’t advise you to reset them again if you have one updated after a hack. If you use a very simple password such as “123456” it won’t show a alert about risking your protection. All in all, Password Checkup is not supposed to annoy you with endless warnings but only when it’s very important. Figure 1 Image Credits: Google As many will see this extension as yet another point for a potential violation, the natural concern that emerges from this checking action is security. Google has put a lot of effort into this aspect, saying that it encrypts the statistics and data used for the look-ups. In addition, the developers took steps to make brute force guessing attacks useless when implementing multiple layers of k-anonymity hashing and blinding. Simply put this implies that in that case Google never gets to know the real user feedback but can still compare the credentials with compromised credentials databases that actually hold more than 4 billion documents. Google is calling people to give it a spin and see how it works for them as the Password Checkup has just been released. In the months to come, they will continue to refining this new tool particularly on the side of expanding its scope of compatibility with the website.