To improve email security

Mar 25, 2010 09:38 GMT  ·  By

Security is always a concern online and, as the methods of attackers get more sophisticated, so do the tools to combat them. Google is now introducing a new feature that may help in cases where a Gmail account has been compromised. Whenever Google detects what it deems as suspicious login activity, it will notify the user that the Gmail account has been accessed from a remote location.

"You may remember that a while back we launched remote sign out and information about recent account activity to help you understand and manage your account usage. This information is still at the bottom of your inbox. Now, if it looks like something unusual is going on with your account, we’ll also alert you by posting a warning message saying, 'Warning: We believe your account was last accessed from…' along with the geographic region that we can best associate with the access," Pavni Diwanji, engineering director at Google, wrote.

The method Google uses isn't a particularly advanced one. It looks at the IPs that are employing a Gmail account and pops up a warning if it sees the same account being used on different continents over a period of a few hours, for example. The warning indicates the location of the suspicious activity and you can choose to see more details or ignore the warning if you know the activity is legitimate.

Clicking on the details link will show the location where the account is currently being accessed from, but it also lists the "Recent activity," which indicates the previous browsing sessions, as well as whether they were from a browser, a mobile device, a POP3 client, and so on.

The new features are certainly useful and it certainly looks like Gmail has been focusing more on security lately. The attacks on several Gmail accounts that were cited as part of the reason behind the decision to drop censorship in China may also have something to do with the emphasis on security. Of course, the warning messages just introduced can be easily avoided by a hacker using a proxy or any other means of concealing their actual location. Gmail has also recently introduced secure HTTPS connections for all web access by default.