Google says Gmail security is ‘strong and effective’ following mass data breach rumors

Google issued a brief statement on its blog this week, promoting the security of Gmail following erroneous online claims of mass warnings sent to end users.

The post, an unsigned report shared on the use of passkeys over traditional passwords.

The reason behind this post seems to spawn from growing noise on both social media and in various press outlets over whether a group called ShinyHunters had gained access to general data on Gmail users at large. While some stories surrounding phishing attempts have made their way to Reddit — and, at the very least, appear to be accurate — it appears as though most of the noise is being June blog post promoting passkey adoption.

Google did update its Threat Intelligence blog post addressing the SalesForce breach early in August to note it had sent alerts to affected accounts, but it doesn’t appear that all 2.5 billion active users received these notifications. Both updates on this page were added on August 8th, stating Google had begun and finished notifying affected users on the same day.

It appears to be unrelated to any recent phishing attempts, though claims on Reddit are mentioned repeated efforts utilizing both Californian area code 650 pretending to be with Google. As always, you shouldn’t click suspicious links sent to your Gmail account or give login information to anyone over the phone.