Gmail Now Warns Users of Suspicious Account Activity

Google today added an alert to Gmail that warns users of the Web mail service when their account may have been hijacked. Using several criteria — including plotting the Internet protocol (IP) address of each successful log-on — Google determines whether to sound the alarm, which pops up at the top of a user’s account and reads Warning: We believe your account was last accessed from… along with the location associated with the log-on. If an account is accessed from one country, then again a few hours later from a different country, Google would likely sound the alarm. The assumption: The multiple and geographically divergent log-ons would be a clue that the account had been hacked, and was now being used to send spam, spread scams or distribute malware