Keen coffee drinkers with terrible cybersecurity habits could be about to get an answer to privacy problems they didn't know they had.
Targeting anyone who is inclined to connect to unsecured Wi-Fi networks in cafes and other public venues, naively entering credit-card details and other personal data, Google is now releasing a new Virtual Private Network (VPN) directly embedded in Google One services.
Available only to customers subscribed to the 2TB Google One plan, which comes at $9.99 a month, the VPN will provide an extra layer of security for Android phones by encrypting online traffic on all apps and browsers.
When switched on, the new feature will prevent hackers from eavesdropping on sensitive data when users are connected to public networks.
Google already offers a similar feature through Google Fi, the company's mobile virtual network operator. However, the always-on VPN protection enabled by Fi is only available to Android smartphones that are subscribed to Fi services.
Unsecured hotspots are notoriously ripe in opportunities for hackers to steal any unencrypted data that transits through the network, ranging from passwords to financial information through IP addresses and visited websites. An outdated app or a weak website, or a service that has failed to protect user data entirely, can all be intercepted and even modified by malicious actors.
VPNs have proliferated over the past few years to remediate the issue by creating a private, secure network from a public connection. When users connect to a VPN, their online data travels through a strongly encrypted tunnel managed by the VPN provider, which means that the information is unreadable and anonymous.
Google noted that in some cases, the VPN provider can still see all the user's unencrypted traffic, such as the domain of every website visited. Reports have effectively shown that this lack