Android users will soon enjoy an additional security layer that will allow them to quickly discover that their Google account might have been compromised.
The feature will be slowly rolled out to all users in a week or two, and takes the form of native Android notifications that will be pushed to the user – on multiple devices – each time a new device is added to their Google account or a new security event has taken place.
Users will be asked if they signed in with a new device or triggered the security event themselves, and will be offered the option of reviewing account activity:
If the user doesn’t recognize the device, he or she can proceed to secure their account immediately, minimizing thus the amount of time the attacker has to do some real damage.
Setting aside the fact that not everybody sets their email accounts to be automatically checked every so often, and they might not see such a notification received via email for hours, aside from being immediate, this new feature also increases the likelihood that the user will review the account activity up to four times.
I imagine that’s due to the fact that we all receive a ton of email that can mostly wait a few hours or a day for a reply, but push notifications (still) have a sense of urgency and noteworthiness tied to them.