Google now gives you Android notifications when new devices log into your accounts
People are four times more likely to review alerts in mobile notifications than in email.
Google is moving more of its security-related prompts to smartphone notifications, instead of traditional channels such as email and SMS.
Rather than receiving an email alert from Google when a new device has been used to login to a Google account, Android users can expect to see a native notification on their smartphone asking whether they have just tried to sign in.
From there, the user can tap the notification to review account activity and take action to secure their account if necessary.
The purpose of login email alerts were to offer account owners a real-time view of access to an account, allowing for a faster reaction in the event of a hijacking attempt, Google said.
Email however is not the optimal medium for security-event notifications and often lands in already cluttered inboxes. According to Google, users are four times more likely to review mobile system notifications than email notifications.
Google notes that notifications will appear when a new device is used to login to an account, as well as when there is a security event linked to an account.
If users choose to review their account activity, they can see the device model that was used to access the account, when the account was accessed, what browser was used, and the device's IP address.
Google hasn't said whether it will bring the new device login alert notifications to iOS. However, Google recently enabled the new prompt notification for two-step verification on both iOS and Android. Instead of a one-time code delivered via SMS, the notification simply requests that users tap yes or no when asked if they attempted to log into a particular account.
Notifications are considered to be less vulnerable to tampering than messages sent on public mobile networks. To receive the prompts on iOS, the Google Search app must be installed, while the prompts are delivered on Android through Google Play Services.