Feed: Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics
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Title: Google Chrome previews feature to instantly change compromised
passwords

Date: Tue, 20 May 2025 17:50:54 +0000
Link: https://www.engadget.com/cybersecurity/google...

Chrome's built-in password manager will soon be able to instantly change
compromised passwords whenever you use them to log into anything.Google
(Screenshot)

Google Chrome has announced a feature for its built-in password manager that
it claims will let users instantly change passwords compromised in data
breaches. Google Password Manager already alerts you when your credentials
have appeared in a data breach, and partially automates the process of
changing your password, but ΓÇö until now ΓÇö you still had to go through the
steps manually for each of your online accounts.

The Automated Password Change feature, announced at today's Google I/O
keynote presentation, goes a step farther. It will apparently let you
generate a new password and substitute it for the old one with a single
click, without ever seeing a "Create New Password" page. The feature only
works on participating websites. Google is currently in talks with developers
to expand the range of sites that will support one-click password changes,
with plans for a full rollout later in 2025.

Automated Password Change was discovered as far back as February by eagle-
eyed software diggers, but was limited to the early developer-only builds
made public as Chrome Canary. At that time, it was located in the "AI
Innovations" settings menu, though it's not yet clear how AI figures in the
process.

This feature builds on password health functionality that Google has been
steadily incorporating into Chrome since it released the Password Checkup
extension in 2019, recognizing that compromised credentials are a common
vector for cybercrime. People often reuse the same short, memorable password
on multiple websites. If hackers steal a credential database from one weakly
defended site and dump it on the dark web, other cybercriminals can try the
leaked usernames and passwords on more secure sites ΓÇö like online banks and
cash apps ΓÇö until one fits.

The best way to prevent this is to use a password manager to generate and
save a different strong password for every account you make, even ones you
don't think will handle sensitive information. If you haven't done this, the
second-best prevention is to monitor password data breaches and immediately
change any password that gets leaked. If Automated Password Change works as
advertised, it'll make that crisis response a lot more convenient.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at
https://www.engadget.com/cybersecurity/google...
instantly-change-compromised-passwords-175051933.html?src=rss

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