I've had a Gmail account since September 2004... it was still in the Beta testing as well, so I am I suppose one of the first users in the UK. In the years I have had the account I have sent thousands of emails and ended up with hundreds of contacts. It has been superb, far better than my old Madmail ( remember them? ), Yahoo and Hotmail accounts. It's been solid too, no issues for all that time...Until Saturday.
Yes, my email got hacked.
First off, let me make this clear. The hackers didn't gain access to my computer, or my wireless, or did they sit in a white van looking through binoculars at my keyboard to work out my password. The hackers got access to my account via Google Servers....yep the mighty Google made a boo boo. How do I know this? Well a simple search on yes, google, and you can find lots of articles on gmail hacks ( with rather a large number of fingers pointing to China? ). I am also rather confident that my password for this account got never be guessed ( and I have all other security measures in place ).
All I can say it is feels nasty... it is like someone breaking into your house and using the toilet ( but not flushing ).
So sorry to everyone my account spammed, I'm hoping that you either noticed before you opened it ( and deleted it accordingly ) or your spam filter picked it up before you saw it. Weirdly it looks like it was only accounts A to M?
More info on potential Chinese link here
More info on the various problems in this forum link here
Long techy document ( from 2008! ) here
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