By Mark Duell and Chris Matthews

Published: 10:30 EST, January 17, 2024 | Updated: 12:39 EST, January 17, 2024

Users are warned of a password that they need to change sooner than before.

Google Chrome: Technology giant Google is constantly trying to come up with foolproof and surefire safety and security tools for its users. In this regard, there are reports that in the latest development, the company has unveiled the ‘Safety Check’ feature for Chrome, which, among other things, checks the internet to see if any of your saved passwords have been compromised. It will now “automatically run in the background” on the desktop.

According to The Verge, the constant checks could result in users being warned about a password that they need to change sooner than before.

Safety Check also watches for bad extensions or site permissions that users should look into, and they can respond to Safety Check warnings from the Chrome three-dot menu. Additionally, Google said in a blog post that Safety Check can revoke a site’s permissions if users haven’t visited it in a while.

Google also announced an upcoming feature for Chrome’s tab groups, including on desktop: Chrome will let users save tab groups so users can use those groups across devices, which could be useful when switching between a home PC and a laptop when you’re on you are traveling.

According to Google, this feature will be rolled out “in the coming weeks.”

The automatic security check is now rolling out to Chrome desktop users worldwide.

(With ANI inputs)

A young pharmacist has urged women to keep up to date with screening tests after she was diagnosed with cervical cancer and had a partial hysterectomy just a year after her last smear test.

Kirsty Browne from Sydney was 26 when she visited her GP just to be on the safe side and asked for a smear test while she was there. She had no symptoms, but doctors had discovered abnormal cells in her early 20s and she had been vigilant with annual tests since then.

That decision saved her life.

Now 35, Ms Browne told FEMAIL about the ‘heart-stopping’ moment she was diagnosed, and how she later gave birth without a cervix, despite being told she might never have children.

“At first I just went in for a prescription for birth control, when I realized I hadn’t been tested in a while,” she said.

‘I thought it was better to be safe, so I asked for a smear test and expected it to be normal again. I could never have imagined what happened next.’

At the time, a Pap smear every two years was recommended for women aged 18 to 70. Now more advanced screening tests for cervical cancer are recommended for women every five years if their previous results are clear.

Three days later, Mrs. Browne received a panicked phone call from her doctor.

“I was told I had to undergo more tests,” she explained. ‘I was so scared. I made an appointment with a specialist who would schedule a cone biopsy, which essentially involves cutting out a large portion of the cervix.”

She was subsequently diagnosed with stage two adenocarcinoma, a rare and aggressive form of cervical cancer.

“When you’re 26 and you have to go through cancer treatment, one of the first things they tell you is that you’re probably going to be infertile,” she said.

‘It was so hard to hear that because I wanted to start a family. Growing up you think cancer is something you might have to deal with as a grandparent, but realizing I might not even have that chance was devastating.”

Mrs Browne was then at the start of her career and completed her internship year as a pharmacist. She didn’t take much time off work because just lying in bed was “worse” than having to work through her pain.

‘Before they started my treatment, I had to undergo a round of IVF, in case I wanted to have a child later. It was so scary, everything just happened so quickly.”

Mrs Browne discovered that it was better to be busy and get on with her life than to be at home and worry about the reality of her life-threatening illness.

She studied for her exams while lying in bed and tried to stay positive – ultimately passing her tests with flying colors.

“Gynecological cancer is ugly,” she said. ‘I couldn’t walk, I was bleeding constantly, I had to have so many operations on my pelvis.’

Her treatment included long days of radiotherapy and several complicated operations that left her bedridden for weeks.

To combat the cancer in her cervix, Ms Browne was offered a ‘radical’ operation called a trachelectomy, a new technique in 2014.

The operation was Ms Browne’s only option to conceive a child, and involved removing her cervix and surrounding structures, including the top of her vagina and lymph nodes, and then suturing the base of her uterus.

‘As a scientist, I couldn’t understand how to have a baby with half of its uterus attached to each other with a steel clip.

‘It was the beginning of my life, I couldn’t imagine it would be the end. I was also so worried about my future. I thought: how can I find someone if I can’t bear a child?’

Ms Browne had met someone three weeks before her diagnosis, but she was not in a serious relationship at the time.

Despite her fears, Mrs Browne met her husband, Murray, two years later while she was recovering, and the couple soon welcomed a baby boy, Baxter, without having to do IVF.

Ms Browne was one of the first women in Australia to give birth without a cervix; The pregnancy had few complications, but at 25 weeks she was given bed rest.

‘Given what I’ve been through, I never expected this to happen to me. My son, Baxter, was born healthy and I just couldn’t believe it.”

Looking back, one of the “happiest” experiences during her cancer journey was spending time with the people who showed up for her.

“My fondest memories are of the friends who came to the cancer ward and sat with me for hours.

‘I felt very happy. I saw a lot of people who no one came to visit and it made me appreciate the people in my life even more.’

Ms Browne is urging women to get screened regularly to reduce the risk of experiencing the same thing she did.

“It changed my life forever,” she said.

A model has shared her ordeal after a routine dentist appointment sparked her deadly battle with cancer.

Elizabeth Brown Lax, now 45 and from Henderson, Nevada, said her dentist “checked my tongue as usual and felt a lump.”

She was diagnosed with stage one oral squamous cell carcinoma, which is normally harmless, and had a small piece of her tongue cut out.

But a year later, when ‘excruciating’ pain broke out in her ear, doctors said the cancer had returned and was now in stage three, meaning it had spread to her lymph nodes.

She was sent for a 12-hour procedure in which doctors cut away half her tongue and part of her jaw before rebuilding them with tissue and bone from her leg – an operation that left her face swelling.

Ms Lax has now recovered and the cancer has not returned, and she has returned to media work in production.

The singer and on-camera host, also known as Elly, also has lichen planus, a condition in which the immune system attacks the skin, causing purplish, flat and itchy bumps or lesions to appear.

The condition is uncommon and affects about one to two percent of Americans, who are typically between the ages of 30 and 60.

But patients who have it are sent for regular oral checkups to check for lesions in their mouth and any cancers that may develop.

Lichen planus may increase the risk of oral cancer in the long term due to the persistent inflammation.

Oral squamous cell carcinoma is diagnosed in approximately 54,000 adults each year – and the risk is more than twice as high in men as in women.

According to the American Cancer Society, approximately 70 percent of those diagnosed with cancer live more than five years after their diagnosis.

The five-year survival rate is as high as 84 percent for those whose cancer is diagnosed early, but drops to 41 percent when the cancer is only discovered after it has spread to other parts of the body.

When Ms Lax was diagnosed in 2017 at the age of 39, she said: ‘My oral surgeon checked my tongue as usual and felt a lump.’

“He actually said, ‘That doesn’t look nice.’ That’s not exactly what you want to hear from your oral surgeon, but my lichen planus had been getting worse for years.

‘He took a biopsy and it was positive for cancer; squamous cell carcinoma.’

She added: ‘No one can fully prepare you for being told you have cancer. For about a week I couldn’t eat, sleep or concentrate.’

‘I remember going to my regular hair appointment and being on the verge of tears, afraid that all my hair would fall out anyway [even though I’d not had chemotherapy yet].’

Doctors removed the lump with minor surgery, but were unable to perform radiotherapy because of her lichen planus.

But a year later she developed pain in her ear, which quickly became ‘unbearable’, leading doctors to determine that the cancer had returned.

“I went back and demanded to be re-scanned and re-biopsy’d,” she said, “and it turned out the cancer had returned and it was stage three.”

‘I remember my surgeons telling me what they had to do with my body to save me.

‘They said I needed a hemiglossectomy, where half of my tongue was removed, and a mandibulectomy, where my jaw bone was replaced with bone from my leg.

‘I would also need a tracheostomy so I could breathe in hospital, and a feeding tube for five months.

“And I would have a big scar running from my lip, down my chin and around my jaw.”

In a tracheostomy, doctors make a small hole at the base of the neck, connected to the trachea, or trachea, so a person can breathe and eat without using their mouth.

In May 2018, Ms Lax underwent the 12-hour operations, which also included rebuilding her tongue and jaw flap using tissue from her leg.

She said: ‘My plastic surgeon and her team were very compassionate and did their best to preserve the natural shape of my face.

‘Not an easy task!

‘After the tumor was removed, they removed the necessary tissue from my leg and reconstructed my face.

‘I was in hospital for about nine days recovering, with drains all over my body that came loose over time.’

A few days after the operation, she decided to look in the mirror.

“I didn’t look in the mirror for the first few days,” she said. ‘But when I finally did, I remember being in awe of everything they had done to save my life.

‘The left side of my face was the size of a volleyball. The stitches were fresh and deep.

“Nobody wants to look in the mirror and see so much physical trauma, but I knew how lucky I was to be alive.”

She then received chemotherapy and radiation and had to learn to walk again due to the operation on her leg.

She said: ‘I had to take everything one day at a time.

‘The feeding tube was rough and getting sick from chemo was horrible.

‘But friends and family came to me and we made the best of it.

“My family did everything they could to help me, including driving me to the dog park in my wheelchair so I could play with dogs.”

In 2020, Ms. Lax also underwent surgery to treat the scar on her face.

She now has a scan every year to check she is free of mouth cancer and the scans have been clear ever since.

In the years since her diagnosis, Ms. Lax has also found a new career path, serving as vice president of production at Network Media.

She added: ‘Thankfully, I have been free of oral cancer since my aggressive treatment five years ago.

‘These days I feel great and full of gratitude.

‘I am healthy and can do everything I could not do during my treatment: breathing independently, walking and exercising, chewing and swallowing, speaking and singing.

‘It is also my deepest hope that anyone who hears my story will help spread the message about this type of cancer, and encourage their friends and family to get early treatment for any strange symptoms.’