Google first introduced a Password Checkup Chrome extension this February to help you check if your login information had been breached, which it integrated with the password manager inside your Google Account in October. After testing this feature natively in the beta of its browser, the company is now rolling it out with the new stable version of Chrome 79. While it's at it, Google is also enhancing some phishing protection mechanisms.

Whenever Chrome notices that credentials you enter on a website have leaked during a previous data breach, it'll notify you that your password has been compromised and urge you to change it. By hashing and encrypting both Google's database of stolen credentials and your login information, you'll be the only one ever knowing if your data has been breached — Google and third parties can't find out. But if you want to, you can still disable this feature in Chrome's Settings in the 'Sync and Google Services' section (chrome://settings/syncSetup).

Here's a detailed explanation of the password checkup process if you're interested.

Google has also introduced real-time phishing protection. In the past, Chrome would only check unsafe sites with a local blocklist on your device that's updated every 30 minutes, but many bad actors could slip past this by quickly changing domains. To combat this, the browser now additionally verifies URLs you visit with a list of thousands of popular websites known to be safe. When an address matches neither the good nor the bad list, Chrome sends it to Google's servers for review (after dropping any user name or password embedded in the URL). The company touts that in tests, "this results in a 30% increase in protections by warning users on malicious sites that are brand new."

Additionally, Google has enhanced Chrome's predictive phishing algorithm that now warns you when you enter one of your stored credentials on an unusual website trying to phish you.

These improved protection mechanisms are coming in Chrome 79 which is currently rolling out. For more technical details on the measures, visit Google's security blog in the first source link below.

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Source: Google (1), (2)