New Google Chrome extension tells you if your password has been compromised

One of the best ways to keep your information secure online is to have a unique and strong password for your accounts that cannot be easily guessed by others. But there can be situations wherein in spite of you having a unique password; the account might get hacked. Search engine giant Google has come up with a solution for helping you check if your password was previously used or compromised and is unsafe to use. 

Called as the Password Checkup, Google added the new tool to its Chrome browser as an extension. It is available on the Chrome Web Store and can be downloaded by any user. How does the extension work? Password Checkup would scan the user’s password(s) and check in its database to see if the password has been previously compromised or has been used. If the tool finds a match of the password with the one in its database, it will alert the user to set up a stronger password. Users can choose to either ignore the suggestion or set up a new password. The tool will also notify users if the same password has been used for multiple accounts as well.

Google confirmed that no one, including the company itself, would know the user account’s information. The company in its blog post stated, “We built Password Checkup so that no one, including Google, can learn your account details. To do this, we developed privacy-protecting techniques with the help of cryptography researchers at both Google and Stanford University,” 

Google stated that it uses a technique called as Blinding to scan and match the password with Google’s Database of usernames and passwords without having the need to view them. 

Last month, Moneycontrol published a story about 22 million passwords getting exposed in a data breach.

Here is how you can install Password Checkup on Google Chrome:

1. Open Chrome Web Store and type Password Checkup on the top left and click search.
2. Once the search is finished, the tool name appears on the screen. Click on Add to Chrome.
3. Confirm that you want to add the extension to your Chrome.
4. Once the installation is done, a green colour shield will appear on the right of the address bar. You can now use the extension.