Google is always introducing new and better ways to make your internet experience more fun and secure. Now Google has come up with an interesting and fun way to login to your Google account using a smartphone. Now you can logon to your Google account on a PC by scanning a QR code using your smartphone. This sounds confusing at first but once you start doing it, you realize how secure and enjoyable it is. This is how it works :
- First of all open https://accounts.google.com/sesame in a browser on your PC. This would open a web page with a QR Code as shown below.
- Now pick up your smartphone and open a QR Code reader on it. Scan the QR code using your smartphone’s camera. The QR code reader on your smartphone would show the URL or automatically navigate to the decoded URL. This is a URL for logging on to Google Account. Before you can enter your Google account credentials, you are shown a warning as shown below :
- You have to be quick to scan the QR code, as it expires after a few minutes. You have to select either Start with Gmail or Start with iGoogle from the warning screen. This would take you to login screen on your smartphone. Once you have entered the logon credentials successfully, the web browser window on the PC should automatically redirect to your Gmail inbox or iGoogle page.
You may ask why would one go through this process and not just enter the credentials into the PC using a keyboard. The reason is security. If you are using a public computer like on an airport, library or school, then you may not know if the computer is infected with malware or there is a keylogger installed on the computer. If you use the smartphone method to logon to your Gmail account, then you actually do not type either your username or password and this saves your credentials from being keylogged and stolen.
So if you are hesitating from using a public computer to access your Gmail inbox, then pick up your smartphone, fire up your QR code reader and login safely to your Google account.