Had my Gmail compromised today

[clipperqb]

Has this happened to you? Today someone asked me at work why I sent them a link to a viagra company. He received the email on his phone while I was standing next to him. Went back and tried to log onto my gmail account but I was locked out and had to verify my account. Once in I see the other contacts that got the email and the ones that were stopped by Gmails spam system. It appears that my account was accessed via a mobile device with an IP from Canada when it happened. Seeing how I rarely use the web client to send emails I decided to delete all my contacts and not sync with my phone. I'll occasionally export my contact list from my phone to card to pc.

 

[Jedii]

Thats odd. My wife had the EXACT same issue with Yahoo. It sent a Viagra add to everyone in her Yahoo contacts.

 

[smacky]

It's a sign.

 

[Vihzel]

Thats odd. My wife had the EXACT same issue with Yahoo. It sent a Viagra add to everyone in her Yahoo contacts.

Perhaps she actually sent them as a warning to others for what happened with her hubby.

 

[Aiyan]

Perhaps she actually sent them as a warning to others for what happened with her hubby.

Now thats just evil!

 

[bluenova]

My sisters hotmail account was cracked (again), also sending out Viagra links. Sounds like there has been a major attack on the webmail services the last 24hrs.

 

[Tangent]

Just out of curiosity, if you've had an email account compromised, how complex was your password? Mine is 16 characters, has upper and lower case letters, numbers, and symbols. Even that doesn't rate as "best" anymore, just "strong". The password I use for banking and other things I'm really careful about is 29 characters and passes as "best"...

Password Checker

 

[groan]

this is a common enough thing called spoofing.
there is little to nothing you can do to protect against it. Using almost any email app anyone can pretend to send mail from anyone.
They don't even need your password. Sigh.
NOW if these messages show up in your sent items, thats another story.

 

[Jedii]

Perhaps she actually sent them as a warning to others for what happened with her hubby.

anyways. yeah, it makes me nervous that it happened so we deleted her account

 

[savoxis]

Just out of curiosity, if you've had an email account compromised, how complex was your password? Mine is 16 characters, has upper and lower case letters, numbers, and symbols. Even that doesn't rate as "best" anymore, just "strong". The password I use for banking and other things I'm really careful about is 29 characters and passes as "best"...

Password Checker

With the popularity of smartphones your email account has become more than just an email account it is your online identity tied in to just about everything.

It seems logical that with the popularity new malware such as keyloggers will become commonplace on the android os

 

[ekyle]

My sisters hotmail account was cracked (again), also sending out Viagra links. Sounds like there has been a major attack on the webmail services the last 24hrs.

I've noticed Hotmail has been having that happen a lot. Everyone, literally, everyone that I know that has a Hotmail accoutn has been hacked at least twice. I've never seen it on GMail though. Change your password and make it more complex. a capital letter, some lowercase, a number and a punctuation mark. makes it harder to crack

 

[bluenova]

this is a common enough thing called spoofing.
there is little to nothing you can do to protect against it. Using almost any email app anyone can pretend to send mail from anyone.
They don't even need your password. Sigh.
NOW if these messages show up in your sent items, thats another story.

It's not spoofing as they are mailing people in the users address book and the sent mails are in the Sent Mail folder which they would not be if it was spoofing.

 

[bluenova]

Change your password and make it more complex. a capital letter, some lowercase, a number and a punctuation mark. makes it harder to crack

Try telling my sister that, good luck .

 

[Isthmus]

Groan had the right answer above. check your sent folder. If your gmail account was compromised, there would be a copy of the spam e-mails there. if there isn't then most likely someone is using spoofing software to pretend to be sending e-mails from your account. most likely someone got your address from a chain letter and are feeding back spam to everyone on that list with your address (or several of those in the letter), as a spoof. It's also possible that they are doing the same thing but got the addresses from some other source, such as a forum with lax security that lets users see each other's e-mail addresses.

Your gmail account is most likely not compromised, and if it is, then most likely it is your computer that is compromised and you should be concerned about all your personal accounts that you access from that machine, not just your Gmail.

 

[ExPalm]

Solution: Find the people who are doing this, and set them on fire. Record the event and post it online to serve as a deterrent.

 

[AndroidSPCS]

Use Keepass, and KeepassDroid to maintain strong and complex passwords for your email.