What is the "Google Accounts Team"?

June 27, 2017 3:04 PM

So I forgot my password to my Gmail account, and so I had to go through this process to recover it. Then I got a pass code to enter, and then another screen where I had to explain why my Gmail account belonged to me (something like that I forget). So I typed the reason "I forgot my password", and then it said a response will be sent back within 1-3 hours, and then they sent me another pass code to type a new password. I didn't know there was so much security for an unpaid Gmail account. Is the Google Accounts Team a group of actual people unlocking and analyzing Gmail accounts, or are these computers or bots programmed to monitor your email accounts? It's strange I had to type a reason to unlock my account.
posted by pieceofcake to Technology (5 answers total)

I can't really speak to much other then "I didn't know there was so much security for an unpaid Gmail account." For a lot of people their email account is the master key. Most password reset flows involve receiving an email. For this reason Google takes securing the accounts seriously.
posted by phil at 5:14 PM on June 27, 2017 [5 favorites]

My guess is, because someone getting into your Gmail account means they also have access to all the files on your Google drive. My company stores everything on our shared Google drive.
posted by lyssabee at 5:15 PM on June 27, 2017

Because it's free, you're the product being sold. For a long time they mined your email for ad data, now they'll just show you ads in gmail. But I think they'll still aggregate and anonymize email data, meaning they have the biggest treasure trove of personal information in the world. And it's that big because people trust that it is secure. If people thought that a gmail account was insecure, then people would flee the service, and google would lose their crown jewel and their stock price would drop. Thus, a dedicated (and probably large) account security response team.
posted by Pacrand at 6:06 PM on June 27, 2017

I suspect that they may have actually used the typing sample you provided to see if you type with the same cadence as the account holder (a profile derived from years of monitoring your e-mail keypresses), and that what you typed in that box doesn't really matter. Just like how their "click all these specific things in these images" captchas really work by tracking your mouse movements to see if they look human, and the thing with the images is just to train their AI.
posted by books for weapons at 12:03 AM on June 28, 2017

Google cares about the integrity of user accounts with the fierce, bright intensity of a supernova.

Every day, criminals attack millions of Google user accounts.

Google have astonishingly intelligent ways of identifying, filtering and resisting the attacks. They are very good at it.

Google will happily trace, track, and analyse you. They will send you advertising, they will try to predict your future and they will sell their knowledge of you to anyone with half a buck.

But they will never, ever, tolerate someone stealing your Google identity.

Google's business depends on people trusting them. They invest billions in protecting that trust.

They abuse that trust in a myriad ways themselves, but they will always protect your access to your identity.
posted by Combat Wombat at 8:01 AM on June 28, 2017 [2 favorites]