Google One expands VPN service to all subscribers, adds dark web monitoring

In a nutshell: On-line privateness is turning into more and more essential with every passing yr, and a dependable, no-log VPN service can go a good distance in providing some much-needed peace of thoughts. Knowledge breaches have additionally turn into commonplace, leading to huge quantities of personal data ending up on the darkish internet. With a VPN service and darkish internet monitoring, Google guarantees to make it barely simpler for folks to protect their privateness and safety on-line.

On Wednesday, Google announced two new safety features as a part of its Google One cloud storage service. The primary is the growth of its VPN service, which can now be accessible to all Google One subscribers at no additional price. It was beforehand solely accessible to these on the 2TB plan and better.

Whereas the 2TB plan prices $99.99 monthly, the brand new coverage implies that the VPN service will now even be accessible to these on the essential 100GB plan that is priced at simply $1.99 monthly. It is going to be accessible on all platforms, together with Android, iOS, Home windows and Mac.

The rollout began Wednesday and can proceed over the subsequent few weeks. When full, the service will probably be accessible in 22 international locations, together with the US, the UK, Canada, Australia, France, Germany, Japan, Mexico, South Korea, Switzerland, and extra.

In keeping with Google, its VPN service gives enhanced safety to all customers, no matter what apps or browsers they use. It additionally protects customers from potential hackers and cybercriminals by masking their IP addresses. “With out a VPN, the websites and apps you go to might use your IP deal with to trace your exercise or decide your location,” mentioned Google.

The opposite safety function introduced as a part of the Google One suite is an progressive one, and one thing that the corporate claims will assist folks higher shield their knowledge on-line. Known as ‘Darkish Net Report,’ the function guarantees to scrape the dark web for customers’ private data, like their identify, deal with, electronic mail, telephone quantity and Social Safety quantity.

The function will, nonetheless, be turned off by default, that means customers should manually allow it. “While you allow darkish internet report, you present and choose the data you’d wish to control inside your monitoring profile,” defined Google. If the corporate finds any matching data, it should notify the person and supply steering on how they could shield that data.

For instance of how this would possibly work, Google mentioned that if it finds a person’s Social Safety quantity on the darkish internet, it would counsel that they report it to the federal government as stolen. As well as, the corporate may also provide customers steering on easy methods to shield their credit score.

To guarantee customers of their privateness, Google added that any knowledge shared with the corporate for monitoring functions will probably be dealt with in line with its privateness coverage. Customers may also be capable of delete any data from their profile or cease monitoring any time they need.