[1]It is not only common sense, but also an extremely safe practice to protect your Google Chrome profile with a strong password. In fact, we can generally extend this statement to believe that it is a safe practice to lock all profiles, whether related to our finances, identity, social life, work life or even personal life.
Your Google Chrome Profile
Back in 2009, Google introduced a new tool on the internet that would help you take some semblance of control over what results come up when other people search for your name on the internet. You can decide what information is revealed about you, and this depends on how you set up and fill out your Google Chrome profile.
The mini bio that you include in your Google Chrome profile may include details about your occupation, skills, employment, education, places visited, and other basic personal information like birthday, gender, etc. There is also a facility to put in information on people in your social circles and about you being in other’s socials circles of influence.
That’s a lot of personal information that is public to view and you have the control about how much and what you put into your Google Chrome profile for others to see.
Lock Your Google Chrome Profile
To lock your Google Chrome profile with a password we will use the New Profile Management (NPM) in Chrome. There needs to be at least one user who is supervised in the NPM before you can access the option to lock your profile in NPM. This is how to set up the supervised user so you can lock your Google Chrome profile.
The Process
- Enable the NPM in Chrome flags by typing the following command in the location bar: chrome://flags/#enable-new-profile-management.
- Choose Enabled, from the drop-down under NPM, choose Enabled.
- Click on Relaunch Now after scrolling to the bottom of flags list.
- Choose Settings from the drop down menu on the right hand corner of your screen once Chrome has reopened Settings now opens in a new Tab.
- Click Add person.
- In the dialog box to add person, type in the new person’s name and tick both boxes on the left of this Add person screen. You could change the picture for this new person, if you wish and then click Add.
- You get a display informing you that this new person is now a supervised user. You can now click ‘Ok, got it’.
- The people list now has this new person with (supervised) next to their name.
Now you can click on your profile name at the top of the browser window, and select the option, ‘Exit and child lock’ to both close Chrome and lock your profile. A dialog box automatically opens allowing you to type in your password against your profile account.
Conclusion
Every Google profile created gives its owner some control over what they include in their profile so that their privacy is protected.
We have briefly learned how to use the New Profile Management System in Chrome to lock your Google Chrome profile with a password in a process that should be easy to accomplish.