Finding yourself locked out of your Google account for whatever reason is a stressful situation to be in—what with all your emails, documents, photos, and other data suddenly out of bounds—but there's now a new way to prove your identity and regain access: a simple selfie video.

It's always wise to have multiple sign-in methods set up, beyond the basic password and email address, as each additional one gives you a better chance of getting your account back if something goes wrong. The recovery contacts feature is a good example, where Google uses verified, trusted contacts of yours to prove your identity.

Now you can also use a selfie video. By following this link you can see if the feature is live for your account, and record your selfie via a webcam or phone camera. If you're having trouble logging in, you'll be able to record a new selfie, which will be compared against the original saved in your account.

At the moment, the selfie video option for my account isn't available, so I couldn't test it out. It seems this will be rolled out gradually to users, though Google hasn't said anything specific about availability or a schedule—just that users can now check if their account is eligible.

"Your selfie video is yours and you're in control," says Google in its announcement blog post. "It is recorded and securely stored with your consent, and you can delete it at any time in your Google Account. It's used only for helping you sign in, unless you opt to share it for additional purposes. Your selfie video is encrypted at rest, meaning it's securely stored even when it's not being used."

Those "additional purposes" mean that Google will use your "video and related data to help ongoing efforts to develop and improve facial recognition, age estimation, and other verification methods that may use your physical features or movement" (the specter of age verification looms large again).

What do you think so far?

There's also the rather obvious issue of deepfakes. Google says there are "multiple layers of security" to guard against fake photos and videos, including getting you to go through several simple movements when recording the selfie—movements that are hard to predict and mimic with a deepfake.

All of the usual Google account checks will be in force too, so (for example) you might find additional security questions pop up if you're suddenly trying to log in from the other side of the world from where your usual login attempts are.

Given the accuracy of technologies like Face ID these days, video selfie sign-in should prove to be a useful backup method of accessing your account. There's nothing extra for you to remember—you just have to bring your face—and it appears at the moment to be difficult to get around.