Gmail’s extra layer of security

After reading horror stories from Yahoo Mail users and reading about how Yahoo’s servers were hacked using simple Unix commands pasted into open (available to anyone) email sign-up forms and other Yahoo Web forms, and almost a half of a million users had their account passwords and user names posted on hacker sites for all to see, we did away with our Yahoo accounts (except the one we use for testing).

And we’ve always been fans (much to some of our readers’ chagrin) of Gmail. Today, we were happy to learn that Gmail really does watch their  subscribers’ backs. And we now know this up close and personally.

We have been testing a new cyber security tool, which uses VPN (Virtual Private Network) to conceal a user’s true IP address and allows them to browse the Web anonymously. And most of these kinds of  programs either slow our Internet connections to a crawl (because they use obscure proxies) or they are very difficult to use. The one we are testing (which will remain unnamed for now, until we’ve really had a chance to test the program more extensively) is exceptionally easy to use, and seems to work remarkably well.

But anyway, it creates a VPN and then all your browsing (doesn’t matter which browser you use, it is not browser specific, nor is it a browser extension or add-on) is done privately — no one knows your IP address or real location, which I’m sure would appeal to some of you. The one thing you cannot do with the program running and turned on is send or receive email — because the company doesn’t want spammers to use it to spam people. But you can use Web mail services like Gmail if you add them to an exceptions list.

I added Gmail to the exceptions list and logged into two of my Gmail accounts. And immediately (within 2 minutes) I received the following email from Gmail:

“Hi  xxxxx,

Someone recently tried to use an application to sign in to your Google Account -xxxxxxxxxx@gmail.com.

We prevented the sign-in attempt in case this was a hijacker trying to access your account. Please review the details of the sign-in attempt:

If you do not recognize this sign-in attempt, someone else might be trying to access your account. You should sign in to your account and reset your password immediately.

Reset password

If this was you, and you are having trouble accessing your account, complete the troubleshooting steps listed at http://support.google.com/mail?p=client_login

Sincerely,
The Google Accounts team “

While many of you, judging by my writing and grammar, might think I’m from Romania, I’m really not. I’m from the U.S. of A. So when Gmail detected someone from another country trying to log in to my account, they blocked the log in and alerted me right away. Heaven knows a great many hackers live outside of the USA — many are in Eastern Europe. Had this been a log in attempt made by someone who was really in Romania, I’d have reset my password right away and prevented any damage.

Today’s experience was a success on two fronts:

1. The program I’m testing that creates a VPN and provides true anonymity on the Web, actually works well (so far)

2. Gmail will alert me if someone attempts to log in to any of my Gmail accounts.

Yay for Gmail. Great job!

——————-

——————-