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Eventually, Google and other big tech companies will give up passwords fully, but until that day comes, a Google Password Manager feature called Device Encryption might be your best bet to protect your prized codes. Although it came out quietly earlier this springas now you can easily access Google Password Manager on your Android home screennow is a good time to check this out it off. Available for Android, iOS, and Chrome, the feature aims to help users protect their information from prying eyes — even Google’s.
What is device encryption?
In short, Device Encryption adds an extra layer of protection and privacy to Google Password Manager by giving you sole ownership of the encryption key that encodes and decodes the text for your PWs.
When it comes to encryption, “Keys” are the tool used to lock and unlock information. Encryption hides data by dividing plain text or “plain text” into so-called “ciphertext‘, which presents itself as garbled, unreadable gibberish. However, this gibberish can be turned back into human-readable plain text using a “key,” which is a randomly generated string of information used to unlock the encryption.
Google Password Manager has traditionally stored a user’s key, stored it in the user’s Google Account, and used it to protect their passwords. However, with on-device encryption, the user’s key is stored on their actual device and not in Google’s digital systems. The feature allows users to unlock their passwords with their Google password or with an allowed screen lock feature of their choice (PIN or fingerprint or other biometric identifier). As Google put it, which means that “no one but you can access your passwords”. That includes Google!
Why you should set up account recovery
You can certainly see why this new feature has somee privacy benefitsbut there is also some potential downsides. For example, if you lose or forget your Google password or some other security mechanism tied to the feature, you will be in a world of hurt. Why? Because then you also have no access to your other passwords.
Since There is some risk of this happening. Google strongly recommends that you set up some account recovery methods before enabling encryption on the device. You can read more about it by reading Google’s support page on this issue here. Also important to note: once encryption is added to the device, it appears that it cannot be removed. So make sure you want to activate them before you activate them.
How to set up Google Password Manager on-device encryption
So how do you get all this set up? The process should be pretty easy. For Android, all you have to do is:
- Open password manager.
- Click Settings
- Beat Set up encryption on the device.
It should be. For the Chrome browser, the process is similarly simple:
- In the upper right corner, go to More.
- Choose settings.
- blow passwords.
- Choose Set up encryption on the device.
For iOS, follow a similar process but start with the Google Passwords website. From there, just click Settings and then click Setup. For more information on this new feature, see Google’s full description here.
Another thing to keep in mind is that you don’t necessarily have to trust Google! For the truly paranoid, this might not be a bad thing. You can register at any time to another password manager like Keeper or Bitwarden and if that doesn’t suit your needs you can just write your passwords down on a piece of paper. After all, it would be quite difficult to hack your notebook.
