Comments on: Google Account Takeover

By: John P

John P — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 17:54:22 +0000

Hmm. This cannot happen with my paypal account. I could give you my user name and password and you could not login. Same goes for the web interface to my bank account. You would have to have my mobile phone to get in. I have two factor authentication on both accounts. Paypal sends a code via SMS to my phone, which I then enter to complete my login.

I also use a password manager, so all my passwords look like W7wV3EQHgJZ&txXcROYP (just generated). People need to get better at login management. Google is not your mother.

By: Amol Bharti

Amol Bharti — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 16:12:24 +0000

Yes, I think WPMail plugin do exist but still needs to be enhanced up to an acceptable standard. For me cpanel would server the purpose. I have got two web mail clients. RoundCube and Squirrel Mail with ajax support. I just go to mail.mywebsite.com and check my mails like a peace of cake. if you say it should be integrated into wordpress admin section so that i can check my inbox then that would be really nice but not something without which I can’t survive because some easy solutions already exists. but yes if we can integrate gmail, yahoo, hotmail and couple of other e-mail accounts together with wordpress and establish a common inbox with great UI then that would become the hottest wordpress plugin indeed. I don’t want to go to gmail and yahoo to check my spam i wan’t to delete them right from my wordpress core.

By: Marcos

Marcos — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 19:11:19 +0000

An easy way (well, easy for a Geek) to backup a Gmail account is to configure your account with IMAP in a mail client (e.g. Thunderbird) and get all the mail.
It’s a dirty solution (difficult to recover your e-mails to a new account, etc.) but it’s not complicated and you won’t be in a black hole in case you lose your Gmail account (or someone steals your password and changes it).

See this for Thunderbird, or Google for some other e-mail client:
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/internet/setting-up-gmail-imap-support-in-thunderbird-2x/

Cheers,
Marcos

By: Google Calendar Offline

Google Calendar Offline — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 05:05:28 +0000

[...] a time when speculation over whether or not it is healthy to allow your data to be intertwined in a large companies cloud which [...]

By: Doug

Doug — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 18:58:29 +0000

I really don’t care hat happens to google. I never use it for anything including searches. It doesn’t make any difference if they live or die. I never could see the fuss about them. Their search engine sucks, their e-mail sucks. The only good thing they have is their satellite thing of photos of the earth.

By: Jerry

Jerry — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 16:50:10 +0000

I like Alvaro’s thoughts. I also think that anyone who relies solely on one companies products to define themselves in this modern age is in dire need of a digital overhaul. If support and accountability is such a big deal, you should invest the time and money into creating your own server with your own services; then, if there is a problem, the onus is on you. You will be the one accountable for what happens on your own service vs. trying to have a company who has millions of users daily address your concerns. Plain, simple, effective.

By: jidanni

jidanni — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 03:06:44 +0000

Providing customer support for a free service? The economics just don’t make sense.
One should expect the same from Gmail as from a kite. If it crashes, tough luck.
No mommy to go crying to.

By: Álvaro Degives-Más

Álvaro Degives-Más — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 07:56:57 +0000

I have absolutely no idea what an orkut is or what on Earth one might want with it, but if you have something running which apparently can be used as a backdoor with shared credentials and then you happily forget about it, you should have your internet access yanked, fast.

Shame on that whiny Ghosh guy – instead of yammering about Google’s support, he should check internet security 101 and get back when he’s good enough to handle it.

Sheesh, it’s just like team phpBB getting hacked because of an outdated PHPList install: it’s always someone else’s fault! And instead of lambasting Google for giving the support he paid for as a free product, he should volunteer setting up the orkut user support groups.

By: Nazieb

Nazieb — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 03:26:46 +0000

Perhaps, Automattic should take over whole Google..

By: Jeff Bailey

Jeff Bailey — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 02:31:37 +0000

(obDisclosure: I’m an employee at Google)

If the Google services are really that critical to you, I recommend the Apps for your Domain premier edition. It’s $50/user/year and gives you a phone number for support.

It’s still cheaper than running your own server.

By: djvibe

djvibe — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 21:12:34 +0000

like the idea of using my google account on so many great services Youtube, Feedburner, adsense etc. But i never thought the kind of damage someone could do to me online with that one password.. its still convenient to have one login though.. just watch out for those hackers scary.

By: Danny

Danny — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 20:12:40 +0000

I’ve really never understood why anyone with important e-mail, etc., would put their faith in a 3rd party company like Google or even hotmail or yahoo! While I do have various e-mail accounts with the larger portal sites, all my main e-mail comes to me directly via my own e-mail accounts. Both domain names and hosting are so cheap, there really is no reason to use anything else for business or important e-mail. And as Brad mentioned above, even your ISP is a better source for your e-mail hosting than something like Google.

I guess I’ve been doing this ‘net thing too long and am somewhat pessimistic, but I actually expect large corps like Google to screw things up! I’ve never had any faith in them, or any of the others, to do things properly. Everything I do, I control, and you can’t do that relying on something as flaky and poorly run as Google is. Their gmail program is by far the largest spam portal out there, yet they don’t even attempt to close those holes.

By: WPCult

WPCult — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 19:30:59 +0000

Boy I am having problems with Feedburner and the new policy to transfer the feed to Google syndication..

By: Gareth

Gareth — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 17:24:50 +0000

Facebook is in the same predicament. Just read another story (3rd or so now in the past week and a half) about taking over of accounts and using them for money scams. The biggest underlying issue has be the lack of no support in gaining control back of the accounts. The story this week was for a Microsoft employee. The unfortunate thing is that some people use this social site for business.

By: Rhys

Rhys — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 16:35:55 +0000

A shocking story especially that it involves a giant like Google who you would expect to be setting the standard for security.

By: Brad

Brad — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 16:20:38 +0000

I guess I am different from most people here as I would never even consider using any webmail source as an important e-mail source. That is as a source to store or receive important documents. Any person who has a website has e-mail from their web hosting company and you have e-mail from your ISP as well. The very thought of using Yahoo, Microsoft or Google as a prime e-mail source scares me to death.

By: Static Brain

Static Brain — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 10:35:34 +0000

I would like the technorati links back to, but I want to keep the google ones as well. Why not both?

By: Nahtass

Nahtass — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 07:30:19 +0000

I don’t trust Google much. They are a service provider, but because I pay for nothing there is no recourse.

All of my critical digital life is pay for service (servers, email, etc). This provides me with accountability, a phone number, and real support.

I believe in entering into a contract of service for money. This is critical in protecting yourself. Google owes you NOTHING because you have no entered into a contract outside of “allowing Google to do what ever they want with the data they collect” and the weaker stipulation of “best practice to safeguard…” (paraphrased)

Google SSL cert is NEVER valid for IMAP / POP on my edition of Thunderbird. Pretty scary.

If Google vanished tomorrow I would feel impact BUT all my critical information is handled and always will be handled by other services.

Read the Google privacy statement, that stuff scares me.

By: Amol Bharti

Amol Bharti — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 06:15:07 +0000

I thought about having my own e-mail host around 2 years back, almost when we started to get gmail invites. Surely the gmail inbox was looking good but it was still in beta and i can not trust a beta for something which is far much important to me. I am using gmail and yahoo on secondary basis, and guess what 90% of the times i get junk e-mails, for example hi5 invites naymez etc etc. on my personal e-mail i have installed spam eaters and customized as per my requirements.

By: poiZin

poiZin — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 05:16:47 +0000

Good post. I recently touched on this subject myself, feel free to check it out – http://nostasolutions.com/2009/02/01/help-my-gmail-account-has-been-disabled-nosta-ruh-roh/

By: Network Geek

Network Geek — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 00:13:20 +0000

I’ve been warning people about this for a long time. It’s great to have all these on-line services that let you have free e-mail and universally web-accessible documents, until they lock you out.

I don’t trust anyone with my data. I trust big corporations even less. For most things that matter, I have several redundant backups. It’s like the Seals say, “Two is one and one is none.” The more control we give to others the bigger our potential problems when they prove untrustworthy.

By: Geakz

Geakz — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 21:39:22 +0000

Google has support? I thought it was like Ron Popeil’s rotisserie: “Just set it…and forget it!”

By: James

James — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 21:02:53 +0000

It’s funny because Google is now the new Microsoft – it’s only a matter of time before the anti-trust folks start going after them.

As much as I like the idea of having everything on-line and associated with a single account, I haven’t made the jump yet. I just don’t like having the same provider for all my services – if I don’t like one provider (such as a webhost) I can just switch and that doesn’t affect anything else.

If you have your whole on-line life through one company and you have a problem with them, then it’s more difficult for you to get away from them.

By: Matt

Matt — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 19:29:56 +0000

Yeah I’ve been getting that too — I’ll see what we can do.

By: K Tempest Bradford

K Tempest Bradford — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 19:14:58 +0000

Yes, if we could use some other service to show which blogs are linking it would be extremely helpful. Sometime int he past 4 months Google became completely useless at that. I get Google Alerts and it’s become pretty crap, too. I get an email about someone mentioning a story I wrote whenever I post because I have the name of the story in my sidebar… sigh.