Google Just Killed the One Tool That Told You If Your Data Was on the Dark Web

What Google Is Shutting Down

On February 16, 2026, Google officially killed its Dark Web Report, a tool that scanned dark web forums and marketplaces for your personal information. If your email address, phone number, Social Security number, or passwords appeared in criminal databases, the tool would alert you.

Google stopped running new scans on January 15. On February 16, it deleted all monitoring data associated with the feature. If you relied on it to know whether your information was circulating in criminal marketplaces, that visibility is gone.

The tool launched for all Google account holders in July 2024. It lasted less than 18 months.

Why Google Says It Pulled the Plug

Google's explanation is remarkably blunt: "While the report offered general information, feedback showed that it did not provide helpful next steps."

The core problem is real. When the Dark Web Report told you that your email and password were found on a criminal forum, there was nothing you could do about the data already out there. You cannot log into a dark web marketplace and ask them to delete your records. The data is already copied, sold, and redistributed across multiple criminal networks.

But that logic cuts both ways. The same argument applies to any breach notification. The value was never in removing the data. It was in knowing you were exposed so you could change passwords, enable two factor authentication, and watch for suspicious activity.

What Google Wants You to Use Instead

Google is redirecting users to three alternatives:

• Security Checkup reviews your Google account settings and flags obvious issues like reused passwords or missing two factor authentication
• Password Manager checks your saved passwords against known breach databases
• Results About You lets you request removal of personal information from Google Search results

None of these do what the Dark Web Report did. Security Checkup only looks at your Google account. Password Manager only checks passwords you have saved in Chrome. Results About You only affects what appears in search results, not what exists on the dark web.

Google is replacing active dark web monitoring with passive account management tools. The gap is significant.

Alternatives That Actually Monitor the Dark Web

If you want to know whether your personal information is being traded in criminal forums, you have options:

• Have I Been Pwned is free, independent, and covers over 14 billion compromised accounts. You can subscribe to email notifications when your address appears in new breaches.
• Mozilla Monitor (formerly Firefox Monitor) scans breach databases and provides actionable recommendations for each exposure.
• Bitwarden and other password managers include breach monitoring for saved credentials.
• Credit monitoring services from Experian, TransUnion, or Identity Guard offer dark web scanning as part of paid identity theft protection plans.

Have I Been Pwned remains the gold standard. It is maintained by security researcher Troy Hunt, operates independently of any tech company, and has the largest breach database publicly available.

The Bigger Problem With Relying on Google

This shutdown illustrates a pattern. Google launches a privacy or security tool, promotes it widely, then quietly kills it when the business case does not work out. The graveyard of discontinued Google products is well documented, from Google Reader to Google+. Security tools should not follow the same lifecycle.

When you build your security practices around a single provider's tools, you inherit their product decisions. Google decided this feature was not worth maintaining. Users who relied on it exclusively now have a gap in their security awareness.

The lesson is not that dark web monitoring is worthless. It is that your security posture should not depend on any company's willingness to keep running a free service.

What You Should Do Now

With Google's monitoring gone, take these steps to fill the gap:

• Sign up for breach notifications at Have I Been Pwned
• Use a password manager with breach detection built in
• Enable two factor authentication on every account that supports it
• Use unique passwords for every service so one breach does not cascade
• Enable passkeys where available since they are phishing resistant by design
• Run Google's Security Checkup one last time to review your account settings

Dark web monitoring was never a complete security solution. But losing visibility into whether your data is being traded by criminals makes the rest of your security habits more important than ever.