Google also rolled out other online safety features in celebration of Safer Internet Day.
what you need to know
- Google has announced new updates and extensions to its existing online safety features.
- Guest mode for Google Assistant will be available in nine additional languages in the coming months.
- The Google Fi app will soon allow you to share your location with friends and family for free.
- Starting next month, you’ll be able to turn on Google’s account-level Enhanced Safe Browsing feature.
Last year, Google introduced an incognito feature for Google Assistant called Guest Mode, which prevents your interactions on Nest speakers and displays from being saved. The feature is initially available for several languages, but that will change soon.
Google announced this week that Guest Mode will be adding nine new languages in the coming months. It adds support for Danish, Indonesian, Dutch, Norwegian, Portuguese (Brazil), Swedish, Thai, Mandarin (Taiwan) and Hindi (via 9to5Google).
Currently, language support for this feature is limited to English, French, Spanish, Italian, German, Japanese, and Korean. When on, Guest Mode won’t remember your Assistant activity on the best smart displays like Nest Hub (2nd gen). It will also exclude personal information from searches, which can come in handy if someone else is trying to access your smart home devices.
In addition to the language expansion, Google announced a number of other updates focused on online safety. Starting next month, the search giant will let you turn on its account-level Enhanced Safe Browsing feature, which helps fight web-based threats targeting your account. This new toggle will soon start showing up in your account settings or when you perform a security check.
You can also share your location with your family directly from the Google Fi app. Your family can do the same, and there’s no extra charge for this feature on your Fi calling plan.
Google also said this week that it will continue to auto-enroll accounts in two-step verification this year, after successfully auto-enrolling more than 150 million accounts last year. The company reported a 50% reduction in account breaches following the move.
Nest Hub (2nd generation)
Best Buy $65 B&H $65
The second-generation Nest Hub is an impressive smart display, not only because of its great audio, but also because of its ability to remotely track your sleep and gain insight into what might be preventing you from getting your best night’s sleep.
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