Three of the most popular e-mail providers on the Internet recorded a massive hit into their security system after it was reported that hundreds of their accounts were published on a Los Angeles website. All the victims were publishing online interviews and articles on several Internet pages owned by Splash Magazines Worldwide, lifestyle and entertainment magazines publisher. Although there is no official statement made by the e-mail providers, it seems like all the accounts were indexed by Google and available through the search engine.

All the accounts were published on Google on Monday and all the users were able to access them if their search queries contained two of the terms included in certain account names.

"I'm composing an angry e-mail in my head to Splash right now. It reinforces the fact that you really need to know who you're dealing with before you provide passwords over the Internet," said Liz Miller, an L.A. graphic artist and writer whose Gmail account and password were revealed online, according to ITnews.

The main reason for this security flaw? It seems like the crawlers of the companies were connecting to the websites when the webmaster removed the passwords to edit the pages. Although the three companies are not involved in this problem, it reveals that the security of the Internet, including mail accounts, is threatened by more and more aspects.

In the past, Gmail had a lot of problems but all of them were concerning the internal security of the service and not the interoperability with other websites on the Internet. As you might remember, certain Gmail accounts were hacked after the owners clicked on a malicious link, allowing the attacker to view the subject of the mail messages as well as some of the content inside the inbox.