Google's 'Advanced Protection' Lets You Make Your Life Painfully Secure
There are plenty of reasons to be paranoid online. From state-sponsored spying, to data-scraping for ad-targeting, to massive hacks that expose millions of usernames and passwords. There are myriad ways to take to stay safe, but Google has just announced one of the most extreme in the form of its new "Advanced Protection."
"Advanced Protection" is not designed for everyday folks, and you can tell because of its severe trade-offs. This drastic account lockdown feature is designed for people at risk of sophisticated targeted attacks, and while it will make you safer, it will also make your life more difficult.
The system orbits around a few basic features. First and foremost, users with Advanced Protection are required to use physical security keys to login to their accounts. On laptops, they can use USB security keys, and on mobile, they can use Bluetooth dongles. Google has enabled this feature as an additional login mechanism on regular accounts for years, but Advanced Protection accounts are different because this is their only option. Unless you have your physical key, you can't log in. Period. This protects you from password theft, and even more sophisticated attacks that might try to intercept two-factor authentication text messages.
In addition to this, Advanced Protection limits the apps that are allowed to access your Google Drive or Gmail account (which has been a vector for attacks in the past), and also makes it much more difficult to recover your account, preventing hackers from gaining access through social engineering.
This sort of security is obviously not for everyone. Google imagines those who might need it as:
These might be campaign staffers preparing for an upcoming election, journalists who need to protect the confidentiality of their sources, or people in abusive relationships seeking safety. Sometimes even the most careful and security-minded users are successfully attacked through phishing scams, especially if those phishing scams were individually targeted at the user in question.
Yes, that is a not-so-subtle reference to John Podesta.
These advanced security are great for those who need them, but the move could also be a self-serving one for Google, which will gain the ability to deflect criticism of its more standard security features by suggesting that anyone who suffers breaches perhaps should have opted into Advanced Protection. Hopefully, however, the more extreme security features of this locked down security mode will be streamlined and trickle down to average users as well.
If you're sufficiently paranoid, you can sign up for Advanced Protection here.
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