Google is opening its dark web reports to all users free of charge

Alfonso Maruccia

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In context: The dark web is a portion of the internet accessed only through specific software clients. Tor and other dark web networks are not inherently illegal. However, cybercriminals often abuse the dark web's "hidden" nature to provide unlawful content, conduct malicious operations, and share user data collected through security breaches or ransomware campaigns.

Google will soon bring its "dark web report" feature to most Google Accounts, providing users a new way to check if their personal information has appeared on any of the seedier dark websites. It used to be a paid feature of Google One, but Alphabet is now interested in democratizing some of One's exclusive benefits among its free users.

Google explains that users can set up a specific profile for the report to monitor, checking for sensitive data that has been compromised or found in breaches. A dark web report may look for personal names, addresses, phone numbers, emails, social security numbers, usernames, and passwords.

The feature displays any information found in the breach results in "redacted form" to maintain privacy. Users can regularly check their dark web report in the "Results about you" page available through the mobile app or Google Account page.

Google notified One subscribers regarding the changes, saying the feature will no longer be available through their Google One subscription "starting in late July." Dark web reports will only be accessible through the Google Account page. They are available to both free and paying customers. Dark web reports are available in 46 countries, including many EU nations, the US, the UK, Ukraine, and more.

Dark web monitoring isn't the only feature Google has removed from its paid offering. In late June, the company sent the Google One VPN to the Google Graveyard for an apparent lack of interest, with no official replacement planned. At least One users can still access dark web reports from their main Google Account page. Mountain View boasted about its One paid subscription numbers earlier this year after hitting 100 million. However, the service is gradually losing its appeal for users who don't need additional cloud storage space.

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What would be helpful is if every time they discovered the ID of one of these culprits they would post his name, address, phone numbers and face on a searchable database that is free and open to the public .....
 
Google already has enough of my data mined, I don't feel like giving them more information they hopefully don't already have just to see if my info is on the dark web. Based on everything out there with nearly everyone's information, everyone's data is already on the dark web. Only way to avoid your data getting out there is to not have it on any database anywhere, which is next to impossible unless you live completely off the grid.

You have a bank account?
You pay utilities?
You sign up for accounts online with any company?
You have a cell phone?
The list goes on.....

If you fall into any of those categories above (which I'm sure 95% of us do), then you're data is out there somewhere and it has been compromised or at the very least shared, if not sold.
 
I recall a TechSpot article a while back about Facebook scientists working on homomorphic encryption. Facebook stated they weren't trying to crack current encryption algorithms to secretly spy on all the data traffic that passed through their servers. Facebook only claimed their goal was only to Gleam the data traffic so they could innocently insert advertisements into our encrypted data stream (I'm fuzzy on total recall). I remember at that time, if I used 7zip to compress some files & encrypted the zip file. When I tried to sent it with a gmail account. Gmail would refuse to send the encrypted attachment. (I assumed because google couldn't decrypt it, copy it & re-encrypt before it left their servers). But, two months after that article. Suddenly, the big email servers like gmail, hotmail, Facebook & AOL all were now allowing users to send encrypted attachments using their servers. Huh, must be a coincidence. Right? If google needs more current private data from us. Its only to match up all those fragmented data points they might have on us to achieve a more complete profile from all the puzzle pieces they have collected over the years. Now a profile on me will always be incomplete cause half my life was in the analog days. But people born after Y2K. Those people have fragments of their entire life scattered throughout the world wide web. Id bet a steak dinner that Google has been working on some sort of digital crystal ball. Anyone ever notice how many time the word ( inferred or inference ) is used in any online companies TOS Tearms of Service? (huh, well there you have it from an uncertified whacko).

What's the big deal about our personal & private data to big-tech companies? Well, our data is their Gold.
IDK, in my neighborhood. Catalytic converters are the latest gold rush & coming to your neighborhood soon.

Lastly,... What a perfect alibi for Biden, he was in church. Oh what a wicked web they weave.
 
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