The above message appeared in my Gmail chat earlier this evening, much to my surprise and amusement. Pat and I are close, but we’re not that close, so I picked up the phone and enquired (at some volume) “Has your Gmail account been hacked or are you drunk?”

His account had, predictably, been hacked. (As Pat later pointed out, this was a problem, but not as large a problem as we would have had if my answer had been “yes.”)

Anyway, this caused me to look up some information on how, aside from brute force password attacks, a Gmail account might be hacked, and might be protected. There’s a fairly straightforward solution there, and Stewart Curry had a very smart suggestion on checking for re-directed mail if your account has already been compromised.

Moral of the story: Gmail is not invulnerable, and I definitely charge extra for some services.