Gmail Alert

Philtor · 15 Oct 2011 at 02:12

Just logged into Gmail to be made aware that my account had been (allegedly) accessed from Serbia and gave me an ip address to go with it. Just finished a full scan on my machine and all is well but I use my Nokia C3-01 to check my email so is this the problem? Could it be something going wrong at Google's end? How would some pup in Serbia get my password given my credentials and impossible password to guess? Paypal etc all ok.

Thanks in advance

Aod · 15 Oct 2011 at 13:29

sometimes these things just happen, around January this year my paypal account was logged into and i was cleaned out to the tune of £200, i got it back though.

I never learned the source of the intrusion

Either way, all you can do is thorough scans (check for rootkits and keyloggers especially) and change your password to something fiendishly complex, or better still, very simple but very very long.
My Gmail password is 13 characters long

Philtor · 15 Oct 2011 at 13:40

Cheers Aod. Im changing all my passwords just in case and going to run MBAM too just to be sure.

KIA · 15 Oct 2011 at 15:01

Is the password unqiue to gmail?

Get two-factor authentication configured asap. A long password isn't going to do anything if the machine is compromised.

Philtor · 15 Oct 2011 at 15:18

Just ran Malwarebytes, then full scan with Avast including boot scan but all clear so my machine is not the source of the problem. I've changed all my passwords just in case but im still none the wiser as to what happened.

panyan · 15 Oct 2011 at 15:24

i use keepass to generate max length passwords for me and store them all in its encrypted file

Philtor · 15 Oct 2011 at 18:26

Might look into that Panyan. Still convinced this was a problem at Googles end. If my Acc was compromised why did said hacker not change my password or spam my contacts? Very strange..

KIA · 16 Oct 2011 at 15:15

philtorrens said:
I've changed all my passwords just in case but im still none the wiser as to what happened.

fluff said:
Is the password unqiue to gmail?

Philtor · 16 Oct 2011 at 15:27

Sorry fluff. Yes it's unique now and so complex that I struggle to remember it

Scougar · 17 Oct 2011 at 16:25

Aod said:
My Gmail password is 13 characters long

I wouldn't want to say the actual length, but my minimum password length is longer than that. (but tbh.. could be more complex). I'm a little bit annoyed that origin limits you to only 15 or 16 characters lol.

EDIT: Think I need to make mine more secure as they could be more difficult :-)

div0 · 17 Oct 2011 at 16:36

Same happened to my gmail a while back. Password was just random letters/numbers and not used anywhere else.

Spyware scans all clean, etc.

All I did was change my password and then sign up for 2-step authentication. It means that when I try to access my account on a new machine for the first time, I have to provide a 6-digit authentication code, which is valid for a few minutes at a time. The code is generated by a Gmail Authenticator app on my mobile phone.

Once you have authenticated a machine, you can choose to allow it normal access for 30 days. Which then just involves logging in as normal. If anyone else tries to login somewhere else, they need both your password and a valid authentication code, which is changing all the time.