Gmail compromised, need advice.

Drswords

My long standing gmail account somehow got compromised today. A spam letter was sent out from my email to everyone on my address book. Even the steam help desk.

I changed my password. But i dont know what to do now. I kind of feel that i cant use that account anymore.

Any advice? Am i just being paranoid? Or should i start changing all 30 or so passwords i use on the internet?

Willeth

You can continue using the account. You might want to send out an email to everyone apologising.

And yeah, anything that links back to your Gmail you want to change. Part of the problem of it storing everything is that you can just do a Gmail search for - for example - PayPal, and find out that yeah, you do have an account. Log in to PayPal, request a password reminder or rest to be sent to your email. Bam.

A lot of the more important sites like PayPal or eBay have security set up to stop this kind of thing, like a strange IP using your account for non-standard behaviour. But just come up with a new, more secure and memorable set of passwords and change everything.

Aldo

2 things:

1: check on the bottom of your Gmail page if you are logged in at any other places, if so: click the button that logs you out.

2: go to this Google help page: http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=50270

Additional reading: http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/detecting-suspicious-account-activity.html

Drswords

Thanks. I double checked a bunch of stuff and came up with new passwords. So i think im okay.

Improvolone

Use a different password for every website.

Mr Blonde

You should run an anti-virus and malware scan to be on the safe side too.

badpoet

Yeah, changing your password won't do much if your computer has a trojan to just send the new password to someone else. I had this happen to me awhile ago. It was embarrassing. A quick apology note, after you're sure you have gotten rid of the virus, will suffice.

sidhaethe

All good advice, but if what happened to you is what happened to me, not much may in fact be compromised:

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/gmail/thread?tid=77127463d8f40cb6&hl=en

See also:

http://www.theawl.com/2010/04/the-gmail-hack-mini-epidemic

http://www.eset.com/blog/2010/04/18/gmail-spam-an-inside-job