Intriguing Gmail feature o' the day

If you're a Google Mail (Gmail) user and suspect someone else has accessed your account, the service has a neat feature that can help.

Once you've logged in to Gmail, scroll down to the bottom of the page. Note the highlighted area that says Last account activity.

If we zoom in, you'll see a Details link. Go ahead and click it.

A small window will pop up and Gmail will give you the recent activity on the account. It lists each of the recent log-ins, the IP addresses of the log-in and the approximate time that someone successfully accessed your account.

If the times don't match up with when you actually logged-in, then you may actually have had an illicit penetration of your account (sounds exotic, eh?).

Obviously, if your account has been compromised, change your password immediately. A best practice would be to change your password every 60 or 90 days anyhow. And when you do, make it a tough-to-guess password. In the past, I've used my favorite athletes, a delimiter and their uniform number (say, Rose#014 for Pete Rose. Eh, the pre-Vegas-era Rose, that is). Easy to remember and tough to guess.

And if you're not a Google Mail user, I'd recommend you'd sign up for a free account for your personal use. As one of the first Hotmail users (I still have my original doug_ross@hotmail.com logon) and a user of about every other web-based email service, Gmail beats the snot out of any competitor I've seen. The spam filtering is rock solid, the threaded messages are awesome, and the automatic memorization of your contacts is rockin'. Give it a try: my bet is that you won't be disappointed.