Since I started collaborating on Gmail Official Forum, the most recurring issue is compromised accounts.
Account compromise occurs when an unauthorized third party has access to another user's login and password. In possession of such information, the attacker now has full control of the account. You can send and delete messages, delete contacts, change secondary email, secret reply and, at worst, delete user account.
Knowing the seriousness of the problem, securing our accounts has been one of Google's priorities.
In July 2008, the company added a feature to Gmail that allowed us to check the last five connections made to the account, with the type of access, IP, and time of the connection.
But for many users, the feature didn't help much. After all, many do not know what IP and of these, a good part do not know how to verify where the IP. So it is very complicated to know if that connection was made by you or not.
To make life easier for everyone, while significantly improving the security of our accounts, Google introduces a new feature to notify us when it detects suspicious login activity on our account.
From now on, in addition to the standard information displayed on the activity screen, Google has added the country and state from which the connection was made. It is much easier for the user to know where his account was used.
In addition, a real time analysis is made on our connections. To exemplify the new feature, the company gave the following example:
Imagine a user who always connects from the United States. Suddenly the system detects a connection from Poland. Immediately, the system will display the following message: "Warning: We believe your account was last accessed from Poland". On the front, the option to display details or ignore the warning will be displayed.
Clicking on View details and preferences, the famous account activity window appears.
If you think your account has been compromised, you can change your password from the same window. Or, if you know the access was legitimate (for example, you were traveling, your husband / wife accessing the account was also traveling, etc.), you can click "Ignore" to remove the message.
Keep in mind that these notifications are just to alert you of suspicious activity, but are not a substitute for best account security practices.
At first, the news will be available only for Gmail. According to user feedback, it can also be implemented in Google Apps.
Thanks to the reader Leonardo Nakahara for the tip!
