By 
In case you almost missed it, today is officially Safer Internet Day and who better to celebrate this joyous occasion than Google, the world’s largest internet search company. Announced on their official Google Drive blog, Google is offering up a free permanent bonus in Google Drive storage, simply in exchange for making your Google account a little safer.
All you have to do is complete Google’s quick, 2-minute safety check and once completed, you’ll get a free 2GB bump of additional Drive storage for the rest of your life. Simple as that. Here’s what the checkup looks to address on your G0ogle account:
- Ensures your account recovery information is current
- If we detect suspicious activity in your account, we use your recovery info to get in touch and make sure no one but you gains access.
- Lets you review recent sign-in activity
- Reviewing this lets you validate the sign-ins are coming from you and not someone who shouldn’t be using your credentials.
- Confirms the apps and devices that access some account information
- This step lets you monitor this list and remove apps and devices that don’t need access to your account any more.
If you can’t get to the safety check right now, you have until next Tuesday, February 17th to complete it. Keep in mind the storage bump wont be deposited right away, with Google mentioning it’ll be deposited automatically to everyone around February 28th (they’ll be sending out emails so you don’t miss it). Unfortunately, it looks like Google Apps for Work and Google Apps for Education are excluded from this offer.
Google recommends completing a safety check every time you get a new phone or laptop to ensure your online safety is up to speed. A link to Google’s safety check can be found below.
Thanks Google! It pays to be safe.
Thanks – just did it.
Sounds like “consent to a full search so we can ‘protect you’ and we’ll throw in some free storage that we’ll be able to spy on as well.” no thanks.
Nope, it just lets you review your “Google Account” info that they have anyway
Except all it does is walk you through the Google setting that you already have setup and it verifies that they are good.
This didn’t give me anything extra!!!
It says by Feb 28th, it’s only the 10th.
I went for it, what’s the harm for an extra 2gb. We will see by the 28th.
I got to finally remove some old devices and apps that I no longer use. Thanks!
Another good reason to do it. I am pretty sure most of us have old devices/apps hanging on that we no longer need
Does anyone know if this will work for the “old” legacy Free Apps accounts?
Why not just try and see, no harm.
Yes, I did. Was curious if anyone knew before I had the rest of my family go through it. Limited benefit for otherwise and a bit of pain going through that.
o/ Who doesn’t loves them some free storage and safer Internets!?
Google Drive is absolutely awful. It just won’t updaty Word and Excel files. Powerpoint files do get updated.
I believe that is a Word and Excel issue.. I have the same problem when I try and use OneDrive. Word never updates easily, and I always have issues opening up cloud saved Word documents on different devices. I love Google Docs just because it updates between devices instantly and auto saves as soon as I make any changes. Word auto saves, but its on the local device, not on OneDrive. Made that mistake early on and caused me some issues.