{"id":289956,"date":"2026-07-15T16:44:00","date_gmt":"2026-07-15T20:44:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/07\/15\/how-stalkers-are-exploiting-google-chrome-sync-to-spy-on-victims\/"},"modified":"2026-07-15T17:45:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-15T21:45:10","slug":"how-stalkers-are-exploiting-google-chrome-sync-to-spy-on-victims","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/07\/15\/how-stalkers-are-exploiting-google-chrome-sync-to-spy-on-victims\/","title":{"rendered":"How stalkers are exploiting Google Chrome sync to spy on victims"},"content":{"rendered":"

How stalkers are exploiting Google Chrome sync to spy on victims<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/cyberscoop.com\/google-chrome-sync-cyberstalking-exploit\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Publish Date: 2026-07-15 16:44:00<\/a><\/p>\n

Source Domain: cyberscoop.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Cyberstalkers are increasingly exploiting a feature in Google Chrome meant for mobile phone user convenience, but can give intruders broad access to a device owner\u2019s private information, according to researchers.<\/p>\n

Certo Software said in a blog post Tuesday that stalkers are making use of Chrome\u2019s sync capability \u2014 meant to make it so signing into Chrome on one device makes it easier to do so on other devices, too \u2014 to spy on a phone owner\u2019s browsing history and gain access to their stored passwords.<\/p>\n

As an illustration, Certo used the case of a pseudonymous victim, Emma, who had searched for a family lawyer and visited a domestic violence support website while her partner was sleeping, only for him to bring up to her two days later.<\/p>\n

\u201cEmma had been careful to only ever use her own device, and she hadn\u2019t noticed any new apps appear on her phone,\u201d wrote Certo co-founder Russell Kent-Payne. \u201cWhat she didn\u2019t know was that weeks earlier, during a few unattended minutes with her phone, he had opened the Chrome app and quietly signed it into a Google account of his own. From that moment on, every site she visited was being copied straight to his account, viewable from any device, anywhere in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

The surveillance is as easy as that: brief access to a phone, signing into a Google account and making sure sync is turned on for that account.<\/p>\n

Eva Galperin, director of cybersecurity at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said on the Bluesky social media app that Certo\u2019s research serves as \u201can important reminder that tech-enabled abuse isn\u2019t just limited to stalkerware.\u201d<\/p>\n

Certo said that Google could do a couple things, such as providing a temporary notification whenever a new account is added or sync is turned on or offering a regular marker to indicate when sync is active and which account it\u2019s syncing to, to protect users.<\/p>\n

Google did not respond to multiple requests for comment about Certo\u2019s…<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How stalkers are exploiting Google Chrome sync to spy on victims https:\/\/cyberscoop.com\/google-chrome-sync-cyberstalking-exploit\/ Publish Date: 2026-07-15…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":289957,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cyberscoop.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2026\/07\/GettyImages-2170707813.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[24,31],"class_list":["post-289956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cybersecurity","tag-cybersecurity","tag-exploit"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289956"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=289956"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289956\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":289958,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289956\/revisions\/289958"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/289957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=289956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=289956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=289956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}