Help Unknown activity on google account

[drhill]

For the second time (last time was a few months ago) I've gotten an alert when
logging into gmail on my laptop at home that stated there was unknown activity on my account at 4:50 am this morning.

Last time I changed all my passwords just in case. This time I looked into it more and saw that the IP address belonged to motorola and was labeled as MOTOBLUR. I remember that the first incarnation of blur was all about backing up your account and feeds as well as all the trashy social networking widgets and syncing.

So despite Motorola, and others, claims that Blur is only enabled "when you use the widgets" it is obviously not the truth. Which I'm sure most of us knew anyway. It just pisses me off more that hardware wise we haven't had any other options good enough to not have to deal with Motorola's pathetic software. While I'm sure there is nothing malicious going on it just proves to me further that the decision makers behind forcing Blur on us are scumbags.

 

[Martimus]

MotoBlur is not just widgets Doc... MotoBlur is an entire application environment that includes email, contacts, calendar, and social networking. Widgets are simply a real-time window into that application environment.

 

[drhill]

I know, I'm a software engineer. I just wanted to point out the reach of Blur to those who think that putting a different launcher on the X gets rid of all the crap that Motorola did to the phone. I also wanted to vent at how sneaky Motorola is. I never gave them permission to access my accounts, nor do they need to.

Oh, widgets aren't exactly real time (nor would your battery want them to be) and I'm not a Doc.

 

[Lars]

Not sneaky at ALL. Motorola is one of the few handset makers that has written a proper sync interface. The apps are called Blurcontacts etc because they aren't the Vanilla apps. I thank them for that. I am also a software engineer BTW. HTC phones still only support one Exchange account despite their "awesome" sense UI. Most Vanilla implementations like Samsung don't exploit the 2.2 api to even move messages between folders.
Motorola makes a handset suitable for business use. They try hard to keep that phone secure and exploit free; not that I agree with all their perspectives. Most people treat them with disdain (not saying you) because they will never need three or four Exchange accounts sharing data and all syncing across multiple handsets and PCs. For most people who barely have a gmail account, any phone will do. Most people won't be using them on construction sites where they have to survive being dropped regularly in less than clean conditions. For those that don't, an HTC phone with Xmas ball glass screens will do. The business users will never chime in on topics like this. They aren't here. They are the quiet majority of sorts.
I think RIM is the only serious competitor in making business tough devices. Of course their devices are essentially twenty years out of date now.

 

[drhill]

That's fine for business users, but I don't want them accessing my accounts. I bought an android phone because I use google services. They don't need to duplicate syncing services. I don't have exchange or any other accounts setup that aren't googles. I never authorized them to touch any of my accounts (though I'm sure there is a line about this in a TOS that no one reads).

I don't trust Motorola's software from a quality perspective. Previous phones have all been the same story. Good hardware, crap software implementations. I wouldn't be thanking them for Blurcontacts. It is a horrible contact manager compared to the stock implementation. It is slow, cumbersome, ugly, and is missing features. It doesn't sync well either as it is always some missing pictures from gmail contacts. It is sneaky when they use a standalone server to do the syncing. The IP address that accessed my account 3000 miles away in SanFran, and not the phone.