Intruder alert ... it will alert users when suspicious activity indicates a potential compromise of the e-mail account. Google hopes to help users combat e-mail fraud and identity theft with the new feature.
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Google has long had a security feature which displays the last login time for the account and whether or not the account is currently open in another location. That information should be sufficient for users to identify most compromises or suspicious activity, but apparently it is not overt enough and many users don't pay attention to it.
The new Google approach monitors certain criteria and considers a range of user behaviors to try to identify activity which should raise red flags. Diwanji explains "To determine when to display this message, our automated system matches the relevant IP address, logged per the Gmail privacy policy, to a broad geographical location. While we don't have the capability to determine the specific location from which an account is accessed, a login appearing to come from one country and occurring a few hours after a login from another country may trigger an alert."
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