Google adds Gmail's 'suspicious activity' monitoring to your Google Dashboard

Filed under: Internet, Security, Google

Back in March, Google added a very neat feature to Gmail that warns you of suspicious activity on your account. In essence (and I'm sure there's more to it than this), it simply checks the 'geolocation' of your IP address against any other logins on your account. If I log in from 'near London', and 30 minutes later someone logs in from 'near New York', an alert is produced. Today the same functionality is being rolled out to Google Dashboard.

It's very cool, and it works really well. I have multiple friends that have caught hackers (usually from China!) just moments after they've gained access to their private email accounts. With Dashboard now enabled -- and thus every single Google-owned website -- you will have unprecedented security from identity theft attempts,World of Warcraft password stealing, generic hack attempts... and so on!

The only problem is that you need to visit the Google Dashboard to receive the warnings. You won't get a warning by simply browsing YouTube or Picassa -- you'll only see the 'suspicious activity' dialog box if you visit the Dashboard (or Gmail).

Still, it's better than nothing! You should check your Dashboard and marvel at just how much information you've given Google too...

Google adds Gmail's 'suspicious activity' monitoring to your Google Dashboard originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 01 Jul 2010 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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