You get an e-mail from your friend’s e-mail address asking for money. In reality, it’s spam sent by a hacker who has taken control of your friend’s account. The hacker e-mailed the friend’s contact list, and used the friend’s e-mail address to get you to open the email. On Wednesday, Google announced a way to help you detect if this kind of suspicious activity is happening to your Gmail account.
An automated system uses the Internet Protocol address to make a broad guess about the geographical location of the account user, and, if it’s far away from your regular location, notifies the user.
Accessed from Poland?
“While we don’t have the capability to determine the specific location from which an account is accessed,” Google Engineering Director Pavni Diwanji said in a posting on the Official Gmail Blog, “a log-in appearing to come from one country and occurring a few hours after a log-in from another country may trigger an alert.”
The warning, at the bottom of the Gmail inbox, will say something like “Warning: We believe your account was recently accessed from Poland.” Next to the warning is a link to “show details and preferences,” which, when clicked, brings up a log of account activity, the most recent access points, and the times.
If a user thinks his or her account was compromised, the password can be changed in the same window. But if the user was traveling and accessed the account from the other geographical location, a link to dismiss the alert is available.
The warning system builds on the remote sign-out and security information Google started making available in Gmail in 2008. The information shows, for instance, whether the e-mail account is still open in another location, such as when a user might check into Gmail from a second location after neglecting…