We know that keeping you safe online means continuously protecting the security and privacy of your information. That’s why protections are automatically built into your Google Account and every Google product. Safe Browsing protects more than 4 billion devices, Gmail blocks more than 100 million phishing attempts every day, and Google Play Protect scans over 50 billion apps every day for malware and other issues.
This month, Aotearoa’s Scams Awareness Week 2020 aims to increase the cyber resilience of Kiwis, and at Google, we see the safety of our products as driven by three core principles: keeping your information secure, treating it responsibly and putting you in control. We’re continuously putting these principles into practice, and wanted to share our newest security and privacy protections.
Proactively protecting you with high-visibility security alerts
When your security is at risk, time is of the essence. We work to make it easy for you to act fast if we ever detect a serious risk to their Google Accounts. Over the years, we’ve developed new ways to notify people about these issues and helped significantly improve their security. In 2015 for example, we started using Android alerts to notify people about critical issues with their Google Accounts, like a suspected hack. Following this change, we saw a 20-fold increase in the number of people that engaged with these new notifications within an hour of receiving them, compared to email.
Soon, we'll be introducing a redesigned critical alert and a new way of delivering it. When we detect any serious Google Account security issue, we’ll automatically display an alert within the Google app you’re using and help you address it—no need to check email or your phone’s alerts. The new alerts are resistant to spoofing, so you can always be sure they're coming from us. We’ll begin a limited roll out in the coming weeks and plan to expand more broadly early next year.
