Google says Gmail hijacking cases went down by 50% after two-step verification auto-enrollment efforts

Google hails the two-step verification auto-enrollment a success, noting that Gmail and YouTube account hijacking incidents were down by 50 percent after it was implemented last year. Along with other security measures for Google accounts, the company plans to continue the auto-enrollment in 2022.

Passwords remain the most used form of account security online. But with increasing cases of massive security breaches and more sophisticated tools to hijack accounts, it became apparent that passwords alone will not be enough to protect people online. This made multi-factor authentication, or two-step verification (2SV) as Google calls it, a significant feature to improve online security.

The company attributed the significant decrease in account hijacking cases to its 2SV auto-enrollment initiative last year. Google said in a blog post that the feature was automatically enabled for more than 150 million Google account users and over 2 million YouTube creators last year. Google account users can also manually enable 2SV on various devices by following the steps on this support page.

The 2SV auto-enrollment became available to more Google account users last November. While Google said the initiative was mostly welcomed by users, some have encountered issues in the process, especially people who tend to use different SIM cards. There were also concerns of losing access to their accounts when auto-enrolled to 2SV, especially if their phones were stolen or lost.

Meanwhile, Google also noted the increasing adoption of multi-factor authentication by governments. US President Joe Biden issued an Executive Order on national cyber security in May 2021 mandating Federal agencies to adopt MFA “for data at rest and in transit.”

Google confirmed that it plans to continue the 2SV auto-enrollment in 2022 while admitting that its implementation can be improved. “There is a lot of educating that needs to happen with 2SV and we want users to understand what it is and why it’s beneficial,” Google’s director of account security and safety, Guemmy Kim, said.

In the same blog post, the company also encouraged users to use other security features for their accounts, including its step-by-step Security Checkup. It will inform users if any of their saved passwords were exposed in a data breach. The checkup will also confirm if 2SV is enabled for their account.

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