Google launches Password Alert extension for Chrome to warn you of phishing attacks

Google has launched a new tool designed to alert users when they enter a password on a website pretending to be Google.

Password Alert for Chrome does exactly what its name suggests — if you land on a website that’s imitating accounts.google.com to garner your login credentials, you’ll receive a warning when you enter your password. This then gives you time to change your password before it’s exploited. It works by checking the HTML of the page to identify whether it’s a legitimate Google sign-in page or not.

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The practice commonly referred to as “phishing” represents two percent of all Gmail messages, according to Google, where users are asked to give up their passwords to fake sites.

The issue of online security is rarely out the headlines —  just yesterday we reported that SendGrid’s systems had been hacked via an employee’s work account, giving access to its own clients’ information. Other notable cases include Target, which saw a huge data breach involving credit card details and data of 70 million customers, while Home Depot experienced a big breach that’s thought to have hit 60 million consumers.

The new Chrome extension works for both Google and Google Apps for Work, meaning this serves as an additional layer of security for Google’s enterprise clients. Password Alert sits among a number of tools designed to safeguard user accounts; others include two-step authentication and security key. Additionally, Google lets you see all the devices that access your account(s), letting you change passwords or log out remotely from a single online dashboard.