How To Properly Protect Your Google Account, Login

After showing you how to protect your Facebook account login from malicious attacks, it is time to show you how to protect your Google account and login as well. Your Google login can be the key to all Google services, from Google Mail and Google Apps to Google Analytics, Adwords or even plain Google Search. Everyone should protect the Google account login as good as possible, but it is even more important for users who use business related services like Adsense or Adwords. Why? Because money is involved.

The good news is that you only need to harden one account to protect all Google services that you use.

The easiest way to harden your Google account is to open Google.com or a local Google domain. You need to log in first on that screen, and click on your name and the account settings afterwards.

Locate the Security section under Personal Settings. It should look like this.

Changing The Google Password

The password needs to be strong to protect the account sufficiently. A strong secure password should have at least 14 characters that include at least one of the following: lower case letter, upper case letter, number, special character.

Rules:

• 14+ characters made up of numbers, upper and lower case characters and at least one special character.
• It should not contain a dictionary word, or word that can be associated with you (home town, last name, high school).

To change the Google account password click on Changing your password under Security.

To change your password you need to enter your current password or the answer to your security question first, and then the new password twice.

A click on Save sets the new passwords which is from then on used to log into the account.

Account Recovery

The Recovering your password link leads to all account recovery settings. These options can be used to recovery the account password, for instance if it cannot be remembered.

You need to enter your current password before the recovering your password options are displayed. Here it is possible to add or edit a secondary email address, mobile phone number and security question.

All three options can be used to recover the account password.

• Email address: Needs to be protected with a secure password.
• Mobile Phone number: Protected by a password
• Security Question: Best to use a code or password and not a word or phrase as the answer.

2-Step Verification

2-Step Verification is a new option to protect the Google account login. It basically adds a second verification step to the login. Google users who have enabled 2-step verification log in with their username and password, and then in a second step with a temporary code that they receive on their mobile phone. The log in fails if the code is not entered during login.

A click on 2-step verification opens the setup for the security feature.

• 1. Phone setup, a verification code is send to the mobile phone number.
• 2. Backup options, important for account recovery, for instance if the mobile phone gets stolen.
• 3. Confirming the settings before the feature is turned on.

Authorizing applications & sites

Here you find a list of applications that have access to your Google Account. You can remove applications from the list to block them from accessing the Google Account. It is furthermore possible to create application-specific passwords which may be needed if 2-step verification is enabled and applications are used that do not support the secondary log in.

Closing Words

Google users have several optional but important configuration preferences at their disposal to properly protect their account. From selecting a secure password over 2-step verification to account recovery options. The best protection includes all options that Google offers.

How do you protect your Google account? Let us know in the comments.

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Author: Martin Brinkmann, Tuesday May 31, 2011 -
Tags:Google, google account, google login, internet security