Google hands out free Drive space for running quick security checklist

Google today said it would give users of its Google Drive cloud storage service an additional 2GB if they ran a three-step security checkup.

The offer was in honor of “Safer Internet Day,” a project begun in 1999 and co-funded by the European Union.

“As our way of saying thanks for completing the checkup by February 17, we’ll give you a permanent 2 gigabyte bump in your Google Drive storage plan,” wrote Alex Vogenthaler, group product manager of Google Drive, in a blog post Tuesday.

Users of Google Apps for Work and Google Apps for Education are not eligible for the extra 2GB.

Normally, Google Drive provides 15GB of storage free of charge; an additional 100GB can be purchased for $1.99 per month, or 1TB for $9.99 monthly.

The security check asks users to review their account recovery information — typically a phone number, email address and security question used to regain control of a potentially-hijacked Google account — their recent sign-in activity, and the apps they have previously allowed to access the information in that account.

Among the latter: Gmail, Chrome, a host of third-party Web apps, and devices, such as an iPhone with an installed Google app.

Vogenthaler said that the 2GB bonus space would be added to the users’ Google Drive accounts at the end of the month.

The security check process begins on this page of Google’s website.