It expands its security features. First, it made its Virtual Private Network (VPN) available to all subscribers at no additional cost. The VPN for Google One members was the first, but only for those with plans with at least 2TB of storage. The 2TB plan costs $10 per month or $100 per year, but now you won’t need to pay that much to access Google’s VPN.
Starting today and over the next few weeks, Google will open VPN access across all plans. This includes the basic $2 per month option, which gives you 100GB of storage via your Google account. The VPN will be available in 22 countries on Android, iOS, Windows and Mac devices. You’ll be able to share it with up to five other people on your single plan.
A VPN will hide your online activity from hackers and network operators. Google says. company It will never use a VPN connection to track, record or sell your online activity.
Elsewhere, Google is adding another feature to help a single subscriber protect themselves. The Dark Web Report, which the company will begin rolling out to members in the US over the next few weeks, can scan your personal data to check whether your information was included in a data breach.
You can specify the details—such as name, address, email, phone number, and social security number—that you want Google to look for in your monitoring profile. Google says it will handle this data in accordance with its privacy policy. You can remove details from your profile at any time and ask Google to stop monitoring the dark web for your information, if you prefer.
If Google finds your information tracked on the dark web, it will notify you and offer some suggestions on how to protect yourself. For example, she says, if you discover your Social Security number, you may want to report it stolen and take action to protect your credit. The report will also highlight information potentially related to you beyond the details you add to your monitoring profile.
Google has added other features to One beyond security measures and additional storage. Subscribers can access the Magic Eraser feature in Google Photos. Prior to this, the feature was only available on Pixel 6 and Pixel 7 devices.