The sky is falling, and Gmail has supposedly been hacked to bits by malicious parties unknown. Or has it? Reports circulated last week claiming that Gmail was the subject of a major data breach, citing a series of warnings Google has distributed and increasing reports of phishing attacks. The hysteria was short-lived, though. In a brief post on its official blog, Google says that Gmail's security is "strong and effective," and reports to the contrary are mistaken.
This story seems to have developed due to a random confluence of security events. Google experienced a Gmail data breach in June, but the attack was limited to the company's corporate Salesforce server. The hacker was able to access publicly available information like business names and contact details, but no private information was compromised.
Over the following weeks, Google alerted Gmail users to an increase in phishing attacks in July and August. It didn't offer many details, but many believed the spike in phishing was related to the corporate server breach. Indeed, more people are talking about hacking attempts on social media right now. This led to the claim that Gmail's entire user base of 2.5 billion people was about to be hacked at any moment, with some reports advising everyone to change their passwords and enable two-factor authentication. While that's generally good security advice, Google says the truth is much less dramatic.
According to Google, its recent warnings about phishing attacks were limited in scale. There was no broad security alert that affected billions of people—it calls these reports "entirely false." Instead, it appears that news of the database hack and simultaneous increase in phishing set off alarm bells around the web, and in what was essentially a giant game of telephone, the claims were repeated as truth.
Google claims its security measures continue to block 99.9 percent of malware and phishing messages from ever making it to your inbox. While the company says there is no increased risk to user security, it took the opportunity to remind people to keep an eye out for common phishing scams. It also notes that people should consider using a Passkey instead of a password; although there are problems there, too.
It's not hard to see why so many were so willing to believe billions of accounts were at risk. User information is constantly under threat, and even the most well-meaning service providers can make mistakes. At this point, everyone has been forced to change passwords or recover accounts via email in the wake of a big hack. That's just another Thursday on the Internet.
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