Ip address in China accessed my gmail account yesterday

-Obviously changed password.

-Made sure recovery email info wasnt changed, made sure no settings were changed.

-Also changed online banking password associated with the account.


Is there anything else I should do to make sure my shit is secure? How did they get this password anyway? I have a WoW account, maybe it got hacked or something. havnt played it in months though.

9/19/2010 10:57:03 PM

You can be hacked in so many ways that it's not worth going into. Just be cautious and make sure you are running Windows 7 and have Microsoft Security Essentials installed and running.

You did the right thing to change your passwords.

Keep your eyes open for any other suspicious activity and take more drastic measures (example: reformat your computer) if you notice it happens again soon. At the very least, uninstall whatever Antivirus you might be running, and install MS Security Essentials.



[Edited on September 19, 2010 at 11:01 PM. Reason : .]

9/19/2010 11:00:49 PM

Quote :

"You did the right thing to change your passwords"

9/19/2010 11:12:15 PM

How were you notified of the access?

9/20/2010 12:31:28 AM

Gmail put up a warning when I logged on one time that warned me of suspicious activity in my account. You can click on the details button at the bottom of your gmail and it will show you a list of all the recent access to the account.

In my case it ended up being a bit of a false alarm because it was actually my phone getting some ip address assigned to NY or something that was causing the alarm. But I'd rather them be too careful, than not careful enough.

9/20/2010 12:47:06 AM

Yea there is a little notification at the top of the email window which literally says "your account has been accessed from China".

9/20/2010 7:33:31 AM

Here is my password system for trying my best to keep from being hacked ...

Main Email account has a password that I do not use anywhere else ... EVER.

Online Financial accounts all use the same username/password, which is not used anywhere else.

Other trusted websites has a 3rd password, that I use across all other trusted websites.

Websites that have less reputation or are less trusted are logged into with junkmail email address, and a 4th password that I use for all junk sites. These sites may, over time, get moved onto my main email, but only as they become more trusted by me.

4 tier system ... at least this keeps obvious opportunities away from most hackers.

Now, are their other ways people can snoop out your password for your main email ... yes ... but this is just one deterrant that I use regarding passwords.

9/20/2010 8:32:19 AM

those crafty chinese!

9/20/2010 9:10:19 AM

seems kind of wierd that they'd log in and not do anything.

maybe check any accounts that use that gmail account as their email account. ex: Bank account -> your gmail. If they got in and didn't do anything its possible they scanned through your mail and picked out accounts they knew they could get recovery passwords for. Might as well take the time to change up passwords everywhere just to be safe.



[Edited on September 20, 2010 at 9:32 AM. Reason : uh oh, hope they didn't steal ur tdub pw.]

9/20/2010 9:30:04 AM

one time my gmail got hacked. i was actually sitting there watching it happen too

i had gmail open in a tab, and failed sent messages started showing up in my inbox, and then immediately disappearing, like within the timespan of a few seconds. i looked in my trash bin and there were a couple hundred sent messages, and then they started disappearing too

pretty interesting to see happen, as personally disturbing as it actually was

9/20/2010 9:36:14 AM

And Google has a new fix for this problem:

http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2010/09/more-secure-cloud-for-millions-of.html

Quote :

"Two-step verification is easy to set up, manage and use. When enabled by an administrator, it requires two means of identification to sign in to a Google Apps account, something you know: a password, and something you have: a mobile phone. It doesn’t require any special tokens or devices. After entering your password, a verification code is sent to your mobile phone via SMS, voice calls, or generated on an application you can install on your Android, BlackBerry or iPhone device. This makes it much more likely that you’re the only one accessing your data: even if someone has stolen your password, they'll need more than that to access your account. You can also indicate when you're using a computer you trust and don't want to be asked for a verification code from that machine in the future. Two-step verification is built on an open standard designed to allow integration with other vendors’ authentication technologies in the future. We are also open sourcing our mobile authentication app so that companies can customize it as they see fit."

Oh, actually I guess it's only for Google Apps users, not regular GMail users, so this probably won't help you. Still awesome though, and I'm looking forward to using it.

[Edited on September 20, 2010 at 2:01 PM. Reason : .]

9/20/2010 2:00:08 PM

^ they need to make that an option for ncsu gmail

9/20/2010 3:09:03 PM

It is kind of unsettling that nothing seems to be disturbed.... it makes me like they had more nefarious intentions!

I would actually prefer to hear from the people in my contacts that they had received spam from my email account; so then i would know it was just some spamming crap they were pulling.

But everybody I've talked to has said they have received nothing.

I changed the passwords for ANYTHING that was associated with the Gmail account.

I guess I'm just gonna keep an eye on everything...

9/20/2010 3:53:55 PM

This happened to me last month.

I think it all ties into world of Warcraft. They are brute force hacking known gmail accounts, once they get a hit it may take awhile for them to do anything (my guess)

Your WoW account is worth more to them than your shitty bank account.

[Edited on September 20, 2010 at 5:49 PM. Reason : S]

9/20/2010 5:47:57 PM

They didnt get my email password, but they did get my WoW account. I got it resolved with a quickness though. They tried to reset my password after i got the account back up they failed.

9/20/2010 6:12:11 PM

hmm, I've got a couple of hits from SC and FL...

appears to be VZW and a mobile device... is this normal?

[Edited on October 4, 2010 at 1:57 PM. Reason : .]

10/4/2010 1:54:34 PM

that depends, are you checking your mail with a mobile device on VZW?

10/4/2010 2:04:39 PM

it's probably fine. punchmonk had some from Georgia, but it turned out to be from the same ip block as half of her tww sessions, so i figure it just her cell phone

10/4/2010 2:13:57 PM

oh yeh, meant to say that. Yes, I check my mail on a mobile VZW device... but I'm in NC... no where close to SC or FL. I just thought it would come from a local IP...

[Edited on October 4, 2010 at 2:15 PM. Reason : .]

10/4/2010 2:14:06 PM

Yeah, like I mentioned above, I get ips from NY and GA all the time but they all reverse lookup back to cingular/att/bellsouth. It's not that you're actually getting an ip in that area, most likely (at least this is how att works) your phone is getting a private address on their network and then talking to a mail server located where ever the ip address is and it's the one that's checking your mail and relaying it to your phone.

10/4/2010 2:17:51 PM

ah, ok. thanks

10/4/2010 2:39:36 PM