DIGITAL LIFE

Gmail Security Alert: New Threat From 10-Second Account Hackers

Losing access to your email account is a frightening thing to experience if, like many of us, it’s part of our online work and pleasure ecosystem. Google says there are more than 2.5 billion Gmail accounts, so it’s not surprising that threat actors treat getting access to them as a priority, regardless of the ultimate attack campaign payload. When faced with an email security emergency, the first thing on the mind of many is to ask for help, and that’s where the 10-second account hackers find their prey. Here’s what you need to know about this predatory attack methodology and how to swerve their attention if locked out of your Gmail account.

The Email Security Alert All Gmail Users Need To Be Aware Of...You only have to visit the official online Gmail support community provided by Google itself to understand the myriad ways that users seem able to find to lose access to their email accounts. Everything from forgetting a password or even the username used as part of the login credentials, having issues with two-factor authentication, an inability to reset a password using the account recovery process, someone else logging in and locking them out, and so on. The good news is that the official support forum, as well as places like the Gmail subreddit, are populated by genuinely knowledgeable and helpful souls, on the whole, who aren’t there to cause you harm. The bad news being that many folk, when faced with an email security issue such as this, go straight into panic mode and that means shouting for help on social media. hich is where the trouble really starts.

I don’t know how to say this any clearer: do not ask for help accessing your Gmail account, or any account for that matter, on X, Facebook, Instagram, or any social media platform. Searching Google for the official online help guides takes just a few seconds., about as long as it takes the predatory hacker bots to strike if you ask for help on X. I’m using X, formerly known as Twitter, as the example here as it remains the social media platform I use the most. Feel free to follow me on X for more advice on email security(https://x.com/happygeek).

The 10-Second Email Security Hacking Threat...The threat to email security that is posed by an army, and I use that phrase learnedly, of bots on X is not only real, it’s also predatory and very dangerous indeed as it strikes when the victim is at their most vulnerable. Let me explain by way of a little experiment I carried out this very morning. I simply posted the following tweet to X:

It took less than 10 seconds for the email security bots to engage and less than five minutes for the floodgates to have been well and truly opened. While many of these ended up in the “including those that may contain offensive content” category that you have to click through to show, others were ignored and displayed in the thread. Most follow the same template response: The same thing happened to me/my friend/someone I know — contact someone@somewhere and they will help get your account back.”

A number of these bots, all using what appear at first glance to be genuine X user accounts, will point to the same user who can help. The truth of the matter is that none, absolutely zero, of them will help you. Quite the opposite, they will use the situation to either relieve you of money for doing nothing to get your account reinstated (they couldn’t do it without using the official account recovery process anyway) or, worse still, exploit your email security anxiety to get you to hand over your account credentials and really take over your entire Google account, access to Gmail and all.

What To Do If You Get Locked Out Of Your Gmail Account...The first thing to do in any type of email security incident, from accidental inbox deletion through forgotten access password to being seemingly locked out of your entire account, is to step back, take a breath and count to ten. If that sounds patronizing, that is not my intent: clearing your head and not making any knee-jerk decisions is the single best bit of advice I can offer.

I have published a round-up of advice for what to do if Gmail hackers have control of your account 2FA, email or cell number, and recommend reading it as the support offered within applies across multiple email security incident scenarios. You can also jump directly to Google itself, using your favored web browser and entering the details yourself rather than clicking a link in an email or text message to be on the safe side. If you are reading this because you have been locked out of your account, it’s safe to click this link for help(https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/6294825).

So, to recap:

Don’t ask for help on any social media platform.

Don’t respond to any bots that reply if you ignore that sage advice.

Do check the official Google support forums and Gmail help subreddit.

Do use Google’s email security checklist to ensure you have recovery processes in place ahead

Reporter: Davey Winder