Gmail is an ideal target for criminals, as Google’s email service has almost two billion active user accounts. If someone reads your e-mails without permission, these tricks can help detect espionage.
These three Gmail tricks can help uncover email espionage. Tada Images / Stavros / Adobe Stock
Developed by Google, Gmail is one of the world’s most popular email services. In the United States, Gmail captures about 50 percent of the market share.
So it’s no wonder that Gmail is also one of the favorite targets of hackers: a criminal who has access to Gmail user accounts gets a lot of user data, contact information, password reset messages and online shopping receipts, all of which can be used for pranks such as scams.
Some of the criminals change the password of the victim’s Gmail account as soon as the account has been upgraded. This gives these chickens extra time to get everything useful out of the account.
However, not all villains do this, because the thugs who quietly monitor the account can spy on the victim’s actions for a long time and diligently. That’s why it’s good to check from time to time whether uninvited guests have accessed the account.
The three signs described here are immediate warning lights, so you should treat them with the appropriate seriousness.
1. Recent account activity
Scroll through Gmail Mailbox view (Inbox) To the end. You can find it at the very bottom, in the lower right corner Last Account Activity. If below it there is a mention that Gmail is also open in another location, or that it was read in the middle of the night, for example, there may be cause for concern.
Click on that item to open the Activity on this account window. From there, you can get more information about the use of the Gmail account, such as which browsers or applications Gmail is used to read, their IP addresses, and when the account was last read from there.
From here, you can also throw suspicious parties out. After that, you should quickly check that two-step authentication is turned on – and then you should change the password.
2. E-mail forwarding settings
Another trick to detect spies is to check your email forwarding settings. These can be found in Gmail’s settings Forwarding and POP/IMAP. Here you can see if incoming messages are forwarded to somewhere else, such as a criminal lair.
If you haven’t turned these settings on yourself, turn them off and – of course – immediately change your Gmail password.
3. Google security tools
The third trick is to use shoes for uninvited villains in the yard Google’s own security tools. Here you can make sure that the account is not being used from extra devices, or that the email needed to restore the account is not suddenly something completely different than it should be, or that your username was found with a data package sold by a hacker.
Once again, when in doubt, you should change your password.