Google has denied last week’s reports that it sent out a warning to users to change their passwords after a security issue that had supposedly affected all 2.5 million Gmail users. A recent blog post stated that the company wants “to reassure our users that Gmail’s protections are strong and effective” to reject the misinformation about claims that the email service had been breached or hacked.
The blog post went on to say: “Several inaccurate claims surfaced recently that incorrectly stated that we issued a broad warning to all Gmail users about a major Gmail security issue. This is entirely false.” The company did not specify how the claims surfaced; however, they appear to be tied to the recent ShinyHunters breach of the Salesforce database, which handles small and medium business data.
The 2.5 million number that was being shared in many outlets is the number of the entire Gmail user base; as such, all Gmail users would have received a notification indicating that they should have reset or updated their passwords; however, many users did not report receiving any such contact from Google. However, some media outlets did encourage Gmail users to update their passwords in the aftermath of the Salesforce breach.
Google did mention in its blog post that phishing is a risk for all email users, and that it is something that the company does have protections in place for to protect users 99.9% of the time from potential phishing or malware attempts. Additionally, around the same time, there have been vishing attempts from threat actors capitalizing on the breach by attempting to trick users into resetting their passwords over the phone by calling them and tricking them into falling for scams by convincing them into thinking their accounts had been compromised.
It is important to always protect your account with a strong, unique password that uses both upper and lowercase letters as well as numbers and unique characters. It’s best to use a complete phrase instead of a simple word for a password and, if you don’t already, use one of the best password managers to handle the passwords for all your accounts. Whenever possible, consider switching to passkeys as well – they use biometric authentication like facial recognition or fingerprints to unlock an account, which makes them even more secure than a standard password.
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