Mittal, Amit - Technical

Is your gmail account hacked?

nospam@example.com (Amit Mittal) — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 15:18:23 +0530

I always appreciated Google for its simplicity and high technical interfaces but someone gmail account is not that safe. Hacking it is a piece of cake if user hasn't taken some steps to secure its account. You can use these steps to protect your account from hackers or use these to hack any other gmail Id

1. Make sure secondary email Id is mentioned in the gmail account. In the absence of that Google will give security question when clicked on "forgot password" for gmail Id. If security question is general or not very personal then anyone can guess the answer it with ease. Keep security question as personal as possible or not at all personal

2. If secondary email Id is given, and if you are frequent user to any of the Google application like gmail, orkut et al you are pretty much safe. As Google sends the "reset password" link to your secondary email Id whenever there is an attempt to hack the Id If there is no login from last 5 days.

3. Make sure your username to other account is not same as gmail Id as Google gives the server name like yahoo, hotmail etc. whenever it sends the "reset password" link so hacker can try hacking the other email Id and some of the servers are not safe.

Addition to these, take these precautions to protect your account:

1. Never enter your password to any unauthorized links. If you get something like that check for disclaimer on that page and most of the times, you will see the information. Also, try other links on the page to check the authenticity of it.

2. Don't login to any site using gmail Id and password unless it is from Google. I have seen many people login to some sites to go to gmail/gTalk/Orkut like gmail lite, meebo, imo, powerscrap etc.

3. If you have to use some kind of workaround to check your Google account then prefer to use something which is downloaded to your desktop as that will be safer than entering credentials online. Even for desktop application, spend sometime in checking options. I use pidgin and it is quite handy. It also let me know which application my friends have used to login. One more use of this is to see people who blocked you.

4. Last but not the least, keep your password as complicated as possible to protect from crackers but in the limit of your memory Use alphanumeric numbers and special characters in that if get a chance.

In case you have a doubt that anyone is checking on you through your gmail Id, go to the end of gmail account and you will find a link "last account activity". Click on this will show you last 5 IP addresses used to login here. Make sure you are using "Newer version" of gmail for this, I like "Older version" for its simplicity

Do let me know, if you have any additional tip and I will update this article.

Google talk and Orkut: a nightmare

nospam@example.com (Amit Mittal) — Fri, 02 May 2008 08:28:00 +0530

Recently, I deleted my Orkut account and I realized that my gTalk friends whom I had connected through Orkut got blocked automatically. This is ridiculous, I don't understand that what Google makes think that deleting my Orkut account means I want my friends to be removed from my friend list?

Well, I had to send requests to all of my blocked friends and several of them questioned it to me.

I didn't get anything on this in Google help so I guess if someone will block his/her friend on Orkut. It will block the other person from his/her gTalk friend list too.

Do write here, if you find anything in this regard.

To my friends, please accept my gTalk invitation again

Labels: Experience, For friends, technical

Are you blocked on gTalk?

nospam@example.com (Amit Mittal) — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 12:01:00 +0530

And you don't know. Yeah, how can you? Google is not supporting that yet but there is a solution. It is bit tricky though. Pidgin is an IM client that can help you in this. What are the other features of this:

Allow you to login to multiple accounts like Yahoo, Google, MSN, AIM, ICQ etc. same time.
Can keep your status as you want irrespective of your presence at your desk.

Now, let's come back to check for person who has blocked you on gTalk. Here are the steps to follow:

Go to that particular user name and right click on that. Select "Get Info". If you see just a straight line without any other details, the person has blocked you.

The alternate way is to enable "Debug Window" from the "Help" tab. And follow step 1 from above. If you see the following message embedded then the person has blocked you.

error code="503"
Error Code 503 comes in two situations:

If you added your friend and that person didn't approve you.
The person has blocked you.

As we are assuming that the other person was in your friend list so only 2nd is the reason

Want to know all such people in one shot?: Just enable the "Debug Window" with level "All". It will give you all information in some time (for me it took one day ). After you see the enough data is there in the Debug Window, just search for "error code="503"" in the Debug Window and you will come to know all people, who have blocked you.

All the Best!!!

Labels: technical