I’m getting paranoid that someone else is logging in to my Gmail account. Is there some way I can tell, or even just tell if there’s more than one logged in browser?
There seem to be two types of successful Gmail hack outcomes: either they immediately hijack your entire account (typically by changing your recovery email then password) or they tap into your resources by try to stay below the radar so that you continue to use the account too. The former case is easy to identify because, well, suddenly you can’t use your account. Ugh!
In the latter case, however, it can be tricky to figure out what’s going on and if they’re really careful, you won’t even see that messages you haven’t read are marked as read or similar telltale signs. The main way to tell that this has occurred is to keep a close eye on the very bottom of your Gmail home screen.
Oh, and before it happens to you, dear reader, go and enable two-step authentication for your Gmail account. That way even if they have your password they still can’t connect unless they’ve also stolen your cellphone, something you’re far more likely to notice!
Back? Good. Now when you’re logged in to Gmail, look on the lower right of the screen. You’ll see this:
If you’re currently logged in more than once to the server, it’ll highlight this with a warning message.
Click on “Details” and you can see a brief list of your most recent connections to your Gmail account:
Look closely at the bottom left: You should have it set to flag you of suspicious activity:
If you disable it — which I do not recommend! — then for the following week you’ll see this along the top of your Gmail page:
As Google explains it, if you are hacked and they disable suspicious activity alerts, you want to know about that too, don’t you?