While things like autofill and password managers have made our lives easier, there are of course some security concerns that come along with it. Google has been bringing updates to both services over the last few months to help users become more comfortable and feel more secure when they use it on their Android devices or on their Chrome browsers. Google Autofill and Chrome Password Manager are getting updates, hopefully soon, that will require biometric authentication for the former and safety checks for the latter.
According to Android Police, the change to how we use Autofill on our Android devices has rolled out to the most recent version of Google Play Services. Previously, it’s pretty easy to just use autofill to fill in your credentials and passwords without any other safeguards. So if you lost your phone or someone else has it, they can just sign in without you knowing it. The change now is that you will have to go through an on-the-spot authentication before they apply the autofill.
After the update has rolled out to you, when you use any app that supports auto-fill, whether it’s for passwords, payment method, addresses, etc, that is already saved on your Google account, you will have to verify it through biometrics. You can use either fingerprint, face unlock, or retina authentication. A video that shows how it works is pretty fast so we don’t know if it actually does verify the face or the Pixel 4 in the demo is really that fast.
Meanwhile, Chrome Canary now brings you a more secure Password Manager which will hopefully soon roll out to the stable Chrome version as well. We already have password leak detection built into Chrome so you get notified when one or more of your passwords or logins are involved in a data breach or hack. Soon you will also get the password check on Chrome for Android according to TechDows.
The new security feature also queries the browser’s Safe Browsing technology and Browser updates so you get the results on your screen. You can already enable flags if you’re using Chrome Canary but no news yet when it can be enabled for other Chrome for Android apps.
