Hmmm - OK, so a confession. I got a gmail account waybackwhen, when it was launched, and way before anyone *else*. OK -  so April 2004 – 6 Months before I joined Microsoft. 

And I kept it.  My home mail has always gone through gmail - thinking that it was a good thing it wasn't on company servers - i.e. no hotmail.

But today...

Firstly, apologies if you received a fairly innocent email about shopping and love. From my email account.  Mea maxima culpa. But it wasn't me.  Some naughty girls or boys have managed to tap into my gmail sent-to list, and spam the lot of you. I’m just glad it wasn’t a nasty payload.

So - how did this happen, and what have I done about it? 

Gmail keeps a pretty good record of account access – first thing to do was to check that – so let’s have a look.

Yup. That’s me. China and back in 10 minutes.  Something is suspect.

So what precautions have I taken since? (make sure you read all the way to the end)

1. Change my password.

Yes-siree. The last one was pretty complex, the new one equally so.

2. POP and IMAP.

Gmail allows you to hook in via 3rd party apps and standard protocols.  Just in case, I’ve turned these off.

3. Finally, I’ve disable any other application access to Gmail.  Frankly I’m surprised these options were enabled – I’m pretty careful about this stuff. (The hyperkenetic rabbity avatar thing is there for a reason…)

4. So what gives?

I’m pretty confident it wasn’t my password – firstly it was pretty obscure (and badly spelled). There were no sent items in my account, so I suspect that my sent-to addresses were harvested and then spammed with my account as a From field.

However, I noticed that Facebook had access to my Gmail account. I remember enabling this years ago, literally caving in under the ceaseless nagging from FB. My totally unfounded guess is that this was the route into the account. 

5. Summary

Ouch. And mea culpa all once again.  Do take this as an obscure lesson in privacy.  And of course, the eventual uncoupling of my 6 year tie-in to gmail and all the accounts it links to. I’ll be moving everything away from gmail over the next month or so…

Of course, my Hotmail account is 9 years older. Time to look at our Office options methinks.

Andy