Thursday, February 07, 2019

Two New and Worthwhile Chrome Extensions

I've come across a couple of Google Chrome extensions that are worth a look.

The first is an extension for the desktop version of Chrome called Password Checkup. When you visit a site to which you have to log in, it scans your login credentials against a database of (several billion) credentials known to have been compromised. If they have been, you get a warning and an opportunity to change them before logging into the site. See this Mobile Syrup article for more details.

Password Checkup is a Google product, and I'm surprised it's not built right into Chrome instead of being offered as an optional extension. (That might also make it usable in the Android version of Chrome, which AFAIK doesn't support extensions). Offhand, I can't see any reason not to use this.

The second is NewsGuard, which performs a similar function for news sites and links to news articles.
As you browse the news, you’ll see the NewsGuard icon next to news links on search engines and social media feeds, such as Google, Bing, Facebook and Twitter. Green rated sites follow basic standards of accuracy and accountability. Red rated sites do not. Blue rated sites refer to platforms, orange rated sites indicate satire sites, and gray rated sites are those we are in the process of rating and reviewing.
Obviously, you have to have some trust in the people who are doing the rating. You can easily see how a site rates by clicking on the NewsGuard icon. For example, the Daily Mail site gets an 'X' on three of the nine criteria, while the Washington Posts gets an OK check mark for all nine. InfoWars gets a red icon because it fails all five of the credibility criteria. If a site isn't rated, the icon is grey and you have the option of submitting it for review.

I like NewsGuard a lot, especially because its rating icon shows up in news articles posted to Facebook, which is notorious for spreading fake news and disinformaton.


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