Users Concerned about Google Account's Privacy

Google and a few other web companies allow their registered members to access all the services built by them with the same username and password. Some people think this is quite a useful function while other raise concerns over the privacy of the account. A WebmasterWorld user nicknamed MyNewPC said that using the same account for all the Google services is not such a wonderful feature because letting somebody else access any of the Google products actually means giving him access to all the services, without any restriction.

"For example, I use my Gmail account solely for business purposes primarily regarding correspondence from one ad network. That's because I had repeated issues with my other email accounts either blocking their emails or bouncing emails from them. So if you have to give your business partner access to your Gmail account, you are automatically giving that person access to all of your other Google accounts," he wrote.

And this is not the only example. Just think of Google Groups. In case you post a question on it and then provide access to another Google service, you also allow the other user to read your messages posted on the discussion forums.

A few weeks ago, security researchers proved that creating new accounts for spamming is extremely easy because bypassing a CAPTCHA could be done in no less than six seconds. Moreover, hacking a Google account, no matter if the attacker wants to get inside Gmail or any other service, gives him access to all the Google technologies - which isn't quite a pleasant moment...

However, as I've said, Google is not the only company that allows its members to use the same account for all the services. Yahoo and Microsoft also share the same account for their own products, including here Yahoo Mail, Yahoo Messenger, Flickr (for Yahoo) Windows Live Messenger or Hotmail for Microsoft.