Google simplifies password sharing within family groups
Sharing a password is something we all do every now and then. With the exception of purely analog ways of transmission – think pen and paper – none of the pathways we take for the purpose is 100% secure. Messengers, as tools used to send a password most often, are known to remember everything and leak occasionally. Email is the same, if not worse. So how do you let your family access your Netflix account and finally watch that movie? Google has the answer.
Disclaimer: first off, the mechanism works only for passwords stored by Google Password Manager (when you save an automatically generated combo in your Chrome, that’s GPM’s doing), and secondly, it is as secure as the Google ecosystem in general. Nothing major to complain about so far, but still…
The new password sharing feature will only work with people you have added to your family group, which can count up to 6 members. Google doesn’t check the degree of kinship (thus far), so you can actually have a group of friends gathered for the purpose. Once shared, the password stays in the GPM of the person who received it. The feature is mobile-only, but it may well be made available on your desktop/laptop in Google’s Chrome browser.
On Google’s part, this is another smart move aimed at extending its audience of regular users: for them, such small things matter a lot, because, feature by feature, they simplify lives. This doesn’t mean, though, that password managers will soon be out of business: in many cases, it is unwise (or against company policy) to store passwords anywhere but your own hard drive. If you need one of those, check out the password managers section of the Informer catalog:
To keep those programs safe and updated, get your copy of Informer, the lightweight and free updater:
