Has this ever happened to you? You are searching for something with Google and all of a sudden you notice at the top of the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) that you are in someone else’s Google account?
I hope not but it has happened to me three times in the past month. Twice just yesterday. Scary stuff because all of a sudden I had full access to these people’s Google accounts. Even their Gmail. Yes, every email was fully available for me to look at. That should not happen. Ever.
The first time it happened a different email appeared at the top of the page (in English). I clicked on the Gmail link and it took me into their Gmail account. When I clicked on another link in their account all of a sudden the page turned into another language (Thai, I think). It was still Gmail but it was in another language. I couldn’t believe this so I took a screenshot because I didn’t think anyone would believe me otherwise. Check it out above. I whited-out names, emails and account name to protect their privacy.
I didn’t know what was happening or what was going on and it freaked me out. I thought I was hacked or something. So, the first thing I did was shut everything down and scanned my computer for everything. All was fine. Nothing out of the ordinary on my end it seemed. I rebooted and fired up the computer again.
Started my FireFox and began surfing and searching again. All was fine until yesterday.
Yesterday it happened again. Twice.
I took a screenshot of the first one but didn’t on the second one because I was in the middle of working on something and was so frustrated that this happened again that I just closed everything and rebooted the computer. Everything looks fine so far. So far! Here’s the second screenshot:
This is ridiculous that this happens in the year 2010. And with Google of all companies. I can see this happening in the late 1990′s when security was not as tight as it is today and the systems in place were not as advanced but in this day and age, come on.
Not only is it ridiculous, it is scary because all of a sudden a person’s privacy is gone when this happens.
The fact that the security of a persons account is possibly open to others is unacceptable. This should not happen, ever. What worried me the most was that if I suddenly ended up inside other people’s accounts three times that I noticed then what is the possiblity of others ending up in my Google account and having all of my info exposed and possibly revealed to less than scrupulous people.
I love Google and have been a huge supporter and promoter of their stuff and their company for years because they make available such incredibly great things to work and play with. My business is dependent on them, big time. I like being able to access my account and email from anywhere at anytime.
I emailed them about this yesterday but haven’t heard back from them yet.
I saw a news story about them on TV a month or so back and one of the guys from Google that was being interviewed was answering a question. It was about something to do with security and having so much of a person’s/companies’ information and documents on their servers and whether it was safe. He said that people just had to trust that it was secure (no, this isn’t word for word of what he said).
I beleived him at the time but after these incidents I am not sure. What am I going to do now? Well, I’m going to minimize my use of Gmail for the time being until they can guarantee that this won’t happen again. I’m going to be using my Thunderbird and Outlook a lot more now. I don’t want someone to get a hold of any of my personal information and emails which are my lifeline for my business.
In case anyone is wondering what kind of machine I was using when I noticed this security breach, here are the basics: Toshiba P100 laptop, Windows XP using Telus Security Bundle.