Google Gmail Security
It’s great to know that Google take Gmail’s security very seriously. Today I logged into Dave’s gmail (to spy on him) and was confronted by this:
“Warning: We believe that your account was recently accessed from: United States.”
This was a bit weird, since Dave had been in the UK and although he was in Munich this week, he certainly hadn’t been to the US! After a bit of investigation we found the IP address and tracked it down to a company – Wordstream.
Wordstream integrates with Google Analytics and Google AdWords – so I imagine this may have caused some kind of problem in Gmail.
If you want to find out who has accessed your gmail, and from where, you can do so by doing the following steps:
- Log in to Gmail (well duh!)
- On your inbox, scroll to the bottom where you should see the following
- Click on details and you’ll see the a history of what browser has accessed your Gmail and from what IP address:
- If you want any more information, just do a WHOIS on the IP address.
It’s just good to know that if someone does access your Gmail account from another country, Google does tell you about it – I guess I best stay in the UK when spying on Dave in future!
Jorgen Sundberg 1100 days ago
http://jorgensundberg.netInteresting, why on earth would that application go into your gmail though?
Andy 1100 days ago
http://www.andrewblackburn.co.ukHere’s the annoying bit… I work in Gibraltar, live in Spain, and have 3 phones that connect to Gmail at one time or another, one on Vodafone UK, one on Vodafone ES and one on CTS (one of Gibraltar’s TWO local mobile providers)… Gmail throws hissy fits at me on a regular basis because of it.
Guy Rintoul 899 days ago
http://www.gmail.com@Andy There’s an option to disable the security feature if you find it more annoying than useful, although a better solution would be if it recognised that you regularly access it from these locations and didn’t throw a fit…
David Whitehouse 1100 days ago
@Jorgen – I’ve no idea why, bit weird. Anyone from Wordstream reading this want to comment?
@Andy – I guess it would be better if it recorded what IP addresses and/or geolocations you regularly login from and then flag up any others…
Andy 1099 days ago
This is all well and good but what if they change your password.
This does not seem like a very secure system.
If I was a hacker, the first thing I’d do was to change the password anyway so this warning is a mute point.
David Whitehouse 1099 days ago
@Andy good point
Larry Kim 1099 days ago
http://www.wordstream.comHi David,
This is Larry Kim, I’m the founder of WordStream. I just wanted to clear this up: we did NOT access Dave Naylor’s Gmail account. The warning message is likely the result of a bug with Google’s security notification mechanism.
WordStream’s Keyword Management solution integrates with Google Analytics using their oauth API (which means we don’t even have access to the user’s login credentials), and we login to Google Adwords using the clientloginapi – both are the Google recommended way (and in the case of Google AdWords, the only way) of interacting with these systems.
Larry Kim
Founder, VP of Products
WordStream, Inc.
http://www.wordstream.com
Larry Kim 1099 days ago
http://www.wordstream.comHi David,
This is Larry Kim, I’m the founder of WordStream. I just wanted to clear this up: we did NOT access Dave Naylor’s Gmail account. The warning message is likely the result of a bug with Google’s security notification mechanism.
WordStream’s Keyword Management solution integrates with Google Analytics using their oauth API (which means we don’t have access to the user’s login credentials), and we login to Google Adwords using the clientloginapi – both are the Google recommended way (and in the case of Google AdWords, the only way) of interacting with these systems.
Larry Kim
Founder, VP of Products
WordStream, Inc.
DaveN 1099 days ago
@Larry Kim I never thought for a second you had