Outlets such as the Daily Dot and Life Hacker are reporting the leaking of five million Gmail addresses and passwords on a Russian Bitcoin forum.
According to the report in the Daily Dot, Google represenatives have told Russian media outlets that a large portion of the data is so old that many of the email addresses are either no longer valid, or are paired up with “very old passwords.”
However over on the Russian Bitcoin forum where it is being discussed, commenters are saying “the base is complete,” and “there is a lot of people have found their accounts. Who found the full version of – and with passwords.” (Translation by Google)
An article in Russian outlet Habrahabr.ru, “And Now Gmail.com: the Network is Laid Out on the Base of 5 Million Addresses, says that “Popular email services from Google was unable to avoid a repeat of putting some pretty impressive database with usernames and passwords, which recently happened to Yandex and Mail.ru . The network has a base with drawers addresses and passwords on accounts 4929090 gmail.com. The relevance of the base has not been verified, but reported more than 60% of valid pairs mail:password.” (Translation by Google)
So, Google is saying that much of the file contains outdated email addresses and passwords, Habrahabr is reporting that the majority of the email addresses and passwords in the file are valid.
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Should you be worried?
This is definitely a situation where it’s better to be safe than sorry. If you don’t have two-factor authentication enabled on Google – and you know you should – do it right now using these instructions for setting up 2-factor authentication on Google. And change your password.
If you do have two-factor authentication set up on Google, then so long as you haven’t received a 2nd-factor text from Google, you are probably fine, but if you do receive such a text, change your password (or just change it anyways, to be super-safe).
The Internet Patrol is completely free, and we don't subject you to ads or annoying video pop-ups. But it does cost us out of our pocket to keep the site going (going on 20 years now!) So your tips via CashApp, Venmo, or Paypal are appreciated!
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