Google apps will add notifications for 'critical' security issues

Google’s latest effort to protect the safety and privacy of its users involves more prominent security alerts. Moving forward, when the company detects a potentially serious issue with your account, it will notify you directly through the Google app you’re using at the moment.    

There’s a good reason for Google to make its already prominent security notifications more visible. When the company introduced Android alerts in 2015, it says it saw a 20-fold increase in the number of people engaging with its security warnings within an hour of getting one. Another advantage of these new alerts is that they’re difficult to spoof since they’re issued directly through the company’s apps. Google will start rolling out the updated notifications to a small subset of its users over the next couple of weeks, with wide availability planned for early next year.

Besides the new alerts, the company detailed two privacy-focused features. The first is a Guest mode for Google Assistant that’s rolling out in the “coming weeks.” As Google points out, there are plenty of instances where you likely don’t want Assistant saving a question or request to your account. That’s where this new feature comes in.