Tag Archives: Google

Posted on Author Atlantic Computer Services Categories Blog

Google Adds Several New Password Features To Help Users

Google is taking additional steps to provide a safer and more secure environment for their massive user base.  Chrome is the most widely used browser in the world. In recent months, Google has made moves to provide better password security. Most recently, they released a Chrome Extension called Password Checkup that scans all of your stored login credentials to see if they’ve been found in data breaches. If they have been breached, it prompts you to change them.

As good and helpful as that is, the company has taken an additional step and has now integrated the Password Checkup tool directly into Google’s Password Manager.

Here’s how it works:

  • Open your Google Password Manager, which you can access via https://passwords.google.com.
  • When the page displays, you’ll see a new link labelled “Check Passwords.” Click that.
  • Google will then proceed to check your stored login credentials to see:
    • If any of your passwords have been exposed via a third-party data breach
    • If the password in question is being reused among multiple sites
    • Assess the relative strength of all of your stored passwords.

Once this check is complete, it will display the results in different categories that show you exactly which passwords are at risk, and why they were flagged.  From there, you’ll be able to change any problematic passwords and re-run the check to give yourself a clean bill of health.

This is a fantastic move, but the company isn’t stopping there.  Ultimately, the company plans to have Chrome automatically alert you when your saved passwords were discovered in a breach and allow you to act immediately to change them and keep your accounts safe.

When the plan is fully realized, Google’s password security feature built into Chrome will rival the capabilities of many paid password management offerings, and that’s a very good thing indeed.  Kudos to Google for raising the bar.

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Posted on Author Atlantic Computer Services Categories Blog

Google Is Searching For Unauthorized Gambling Apps On Play Store

Google heavily regulates gambling and gaming apps on its Play Store.  It’s not hard to understand why.  The industry has a long history of gouging and otherwise abusing the people who play their games, to say nothing of the flouting of local laws. In response to the company’s heavy-handed regulation of their industry, some app developers have taken to disguising the nature of their apps.

On the surface, these stealth gaming apps appear to have other, more mundane functions, but of course once you actually install them, their true natures become readily apparent. Researchers found one app that was described as a hub for holiday information but once installed, its only function was to redirect users to a lottery system.

Unfortunately, it’s a strategy that pays from the standpoint of the developers.  Some of the apps discovered to be little more than shells were spotted in Top 100 lists. Many had been rated more than a hundred thousand times, which gives a sense of the scope and scale of the problem.

Google has taken note of the trend and has begun ruthlessly removing any apps that employ this kind of strategy, with Apple taking a similar stance.  Unfortunately, about the best the two tech giants can do is clean up the mess after the fact, because many of the app developers making use of this redirect strategy have gotten quite cunning about it. They are deploying an app that appears perfectly normal and then flipping a virtual switch to activate its redirect features once it has been inspected by Google and Apple, respectively.  That, of course, makes it virtually impossible to spot on the front end.

The best thing you can do to prevent downloading such an app is to carefully read and heed the user reviews.  It’s certainly not a perfect solution, but it’s better than nothing.

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Posted on Author Atlantic Computer Services Categories Blog

Some Android Apps Are Charging People Big Money

Security researchers at Sophos Labs have alerted Google to the presence of more than two dozen apps on the Play Store that are abusing a loophole in Google’s policies that allow them to charge hefty fees to unsuspecting users.  Here’s how it works: Many apps offer a free and a subscription-based service, and many of those allow users to try the full version of the app for a free trial period.

If they decide they don’t want to pay for the full version, they can cancel their subscription before the free trial ends and avoid any fees.

According to the letter of the law of Google’s policies though, canceling a free trial and uninstalling the app in question are two separate events.  Most developers interpret an uninstall as a cancellation of the free trial, but not all.  A few unsavory developers have decided that unless the user specifically cancels their free trial prior to uninstalling the app, they’ll charge them anyway.

In many cases, the charges are modest. However, the worst abusers of this policy have hit unsuspecting users with charges amounting to hundreds of dollars for very simple apps like calculators, GIF creators or QR code readers.

Since being alerted to the issue, Google has removed more than half of the offending apps, but a few of them remain. Be sure you look closely at the terms of any app you install.  The last thing you want is to be hit with a hefty fee for what amounts to a moderately useful app.

It should be noted that the apps in question can, in no way, be described as malware.  They’re perfectly innocent apps that developers have built excessive, even predatory fees into.  Kudos to Google for taking a stand against the practice but we wish they had washed them all away.  As it stands, there are still a few bad actors on the Play Store, so be mindful of that.

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Posted on Author Atlantic Computer Services Categories Blog

New Chrome Feature Allows Sending Web Pages To Devices

If you use Google’s Chrome browser for web connectivity, you’re about to get a new feature you’ll probably fall in love with.

Chrome 77 is now available for Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android.  For years, Google’s primary mission where the web is concerned has been to increase the quality of the user experience and the company keeps finding new ways to do just that.

Their latest offering, available in Chrome 77, will allow you to send web content to any other device you own that you use Chrome on.

Here’s how it works:

Let’s say you’re on your phone and you run across an article that deserves more time and attention, so it is probably something you’d like to revisit on your PC.  Easily done.  Just “send the web page” in question to any device on your device list drop down, and you’re all set.  You’ll be able to pick up reading the article in question where you left off on the device you select.

If you’re using Chrome on iOS, you will need to have the app open for the new functionality to work, and you’ll need to accept the sent tab because the functionality isn’t quite as tightly meshed on iOS as it is on the other platforms.

It’s a small change, but a significant one that enhances the overall user experience.  The days of browsing the web on a single device are long gone. Chrome plays a major role in the Windows, Android, and Apple product ecosystems. It also has the ability to fly seamlessly from one type of device to another (even devices on entirely different ecosystems) and browse your preferred content seamlessly is compelling.  Kudos to Google for the recent enhancement.  We can hardly wait to see what else the future holds.

 

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Posted on Author Atlantic Computer Services Categories Blog

LastPass User Credentials May Have Been Exposed To Hackers

Do you use the password manager LastPass?  If so, you’re certainly not alone.  In recent years it has seen its popularity surge and has grown to become the most popular app of its type on the web.  Unfortunately, last month, Tavis Ormandy (part of Google’s Project Zero team) discovered a critical flaw in the app’s design that allowed some user data to be compromised.

Having said that, there are a couple of important caveats:

First, the bug only appears for Chrome and Opera browser extensions.  Second, the only credentials revealed are the ones for the last site you visited, so this bug does not expose all the passwords that LastPass saves and manages for you.

Even so, it’s a critical bug and the company moved swiftly to patch the issue.  If you download the latest build as soon as you finish reading this article, you won’t have any issues.

It should also be noted that since Google found and reported the issue, and since LastPass moved so quickly to resolve it, there’s no indication that this issue was exploited by hackers in the wild.  Even so, it doesn’t pay to take chances, so if you’re a LastPass user and it’s been a while since you updated, the time to do so is now while it’s still fresh in your mind.

The worst thing you could do would be to abandon the password gate because of a bug that has already been fixed.  Unfortunately, this isn’t the first, and won’t be the last issue of this type to impact LastPass and other password protection services.  Even though that’s true, you’re much more secure using them than not.  If you’re not currently using LastPass or some other password manager, you should strongly consider doing so.  It’s a simple way to take your online security to the next level.

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