The big tech’s decision to enable automatic two-step verification, introduced last year, seems to have borne fruit and is well on its way to continuation.
Last year, Google introduced a feature that allowed the users to set up two-step verification (2SV) on their account and started to enroll them automatically. Now, the firm has revealed that as a result of this move the account breaches have reportedly dropped by 50 percent among users where two-step verification in Google-speak was set to auto-enabled when compared to the password-only users.
The company is still interested in automatically integrating the security feature into even more accounts, although it hasn’t shared a firm timeline for the rollout yet, but promised to continue it through 2022. More than 150 million people have been auto-enrolled so far, including more than 2 million YouTube creators.
Additionally, the company also promised more security upgrades to help mark ‘Safer Internet Day’. As of March, Google will let its users opt-in to an account-level safe browsing option that keeps one from visiting known harmful sites. Google is also expanding Assistant’s privacy-minded Guest Mode to nine new languages in the coming months.
Although, the company does have a realization that the two-factor authentication is still a bit of a hassle for the users and is working on other ways to make online spaces safer for its users by looking into other ways that will replace passwords while providing a secure and seamless sign-in experience.
However, amidst the claims of secret surveillance accusations on the Swiss tech firm Mitto, the company that Google has partnered up with to provide a two-step verification to its users, we’re yet to find out if this feature is here to stay for long.