The new feature is being tested in the Canary branch

Aug 24, 2019 19:48 GMT  ·  By

Google Chrome will be implementing a feature called Password Leak Detection, which should tell people if their password has leaked online.

As it stands right now, it’s not easy to know if your password is just one of the millions that are leaked every year from all possible online services. Each time something happens, we hurry to change the passwords, without even knowing if we were affected.

To make matters worse, it often happens for our passwords to actually be part of a leak, and we don’t have the slightest idea that we’re now exposed. This is where a service such as Password Leak Detection could be incredibly useful.

Still in the early stages

According to Techdows report, the latest Chrome 78 Canary already has the feature and it can be turned on via the chrome://flags customization. To make things even better, the Password Leak Detection is also implemented in the Password manager, so people will be informed when they are using a compromised password.

When the user tries to enter a compromised password, the browser will warn him and offer to change the password. This is done by the browser which compares the entry with the existing public breaches. It’s unclear where is Google getting the data for comparison because the only major public resource for this comparison is the Have I Been Pwned website.

Implementing this feature in the most used Internet browser is going to make a major difference because a lot people are going to find out if their passwords are compromised. And you can be sure that most of the users who had their data leaked online have no idea that it actually happened.

It’s also worth mentioning that the feature also works on Android as well, which in turn means that even more people will be covered. Since it’s in the Google Chrome Canary right now, it’s going to take a few months until it reaches the stable branch.