I received a notice from Google last night that a gmail account I never made has been deleted due to Terms of Service violations.

At first I thought this was some BS, but after logging into Google and looking this was a real gmail account linked to my other email account at comcast.

Needless to say this has caused all manor of BS with the wife who now thinks I have some secret email.

I never made this stupid gmail account and I have no idea how in the hell it got linked to my main email account through comcast.

How does this happen? How do I find out what happened? I need some way of proving this wasn't me.

Examine your password philosophy. Simple passwords and using the same password for more than one account is an idea who's time has long passed.

I suggest Bitwarden password manager.

If your wife is suspicious of you over something like this I'd argue a phantom email account at Google is the least of your worries

(Just related this to my wife. She had the same reaction.)

quote:

Originally posted by mark123:
Examine your password philosophy. Simple passwords and using the same password for more than one account is an idea who's time has long passed.

That's good advice, but does not address how he got the notification for an email account cancellation for an email account he claims he never set up.

It's a stretch but some websites etc will give you the option to save your login as google credentials. Long shot but perhaps one of those led to the creation of said email address?

quote:

Originally posted by ensigmatic:
That's good advice, but does not address how he got the notification for an email account cancellation for an email account he claims he never set up.

If his Google account password is compromised an account can be added or linked.

quote:

Originally posted by Lord Vaalic:
How does this happen? How do I find out what happened? I need some way of proving this wasn't me.

There are any number of ways that this can happen, from targeted hackery to carelessness on your part. There is no practical way to determine the cause after the fact, it probably doesn't matter anyway as it is unlikely that the same compromise will be used again. If I were to hazard a guess, Google is quite aggressive about automatically assigning an email account to virtually anyone who registers for a Google service. It may not have been a volitional act on any individual's part that got the account created.

As far as proving it wasn't you, that is akin to proving a negative.

Ask your wife to trust you. Your past and future behavior should give her ample reason to do so. If not, see ensigmatic's post above.

It may not be a bad idea to create a document with all your logins and passwords, print it out, put it in an envelope, and giving it to your wife to store in your safe. In case you get hit by a semi coming back from the grocery store. Might go a long way to resolving some of those trust issues.

After thinking this over a little, one thing you could do forensically is to re-establish the Google account that was "deleted" with a new password. The email messages that get sent to it might give you some idea of where and how it was set up. Let Google support know what you are doing as you will probably need their involvement to re-instantiate a canceled login.

quote:

Ask your wife to trust you. Your past and future behavior should give her ample reason to do so.

Past behavior is the issue... some years ago we had a very toxic relationship with many issues and just about divorced. I am a very secretive and private person by nature and held a lot in, I let a lot of things fester and so did she and it wasn't good, and there were bad behaviors on both sides. Not proud of it, and don't really like sharing that but there it is. We had our vows renewed and agreed to move on. I have been more open and honest since then, we have been through a lot of shit together and we seemed to be really well past it all and in a new happy chapter but this of course stirred up a lot of old dead and buried shit.

quote:

Originally posted by Lord Vaalic:

quote:

Ask your wife to trust you. Your past and future behavior should give her ample reason to do so.

Past behavior is the issue... some years ago we had a very toxic relationship with many issues and just about divorced. ... we seemed to be really well past it all and in a new happy chapter but this of course stirred up a lot of old dead and buried shit.

Then, sadly, you have a problem that is unlikely to be solved by technical means.

I suppose it's possible you could inquire of Google and it's possible they could cough-up some information relating to when and from what IP address the email account was created, but I think it unlikely.

More likely, as architect wrote, either you've been sloppy with your on-line hygiene, you fell victim to a phishing attack at some point, Google's aggressive creating of accounts, etc.

One suspects that, since the email account was terminated for violating Googles ToS, your Google account is compromised. You'll be wanting to change your password there and for Comcast immediately.

Going forward: Different passwords everywhere, preferably not even similar to one another, and use a password manager to keep track of them.

I am curious about one point, though: How it (apparently) came to be somebody breached your Google account and use that email address, but not otherwise abuse your Google account or change the password to lock you out?

Btw: I have my own password safe and my wife has hers. Family accounts (NetFlix, Comcast, etc.) I make sure she gets the account credentials. But she does not have the pass phrase for my encrypted keyring, she does not have my login credentials on the computer I use, nor the root password, nor has she the account credentials for any account that is mine and mine alone.

She trusts me, implicitly, nonetheless.

(I have provided a mechanism whereby she can acquire the pass phrase for my encrypted keyring in the event of my untimely demise. A best friend failed to do that for his wife, which made his widows life even more miserable than it otherwise would have been.)

Are you certain that all the emails, including the notice from Google is real?

Sounds like a phishing attempt to me.

Clicking any of the links could bring you to a forged website that will trick you into either entering your current Google password or your comcast password.

If everything is indeed real (and look carefully), you could hypothetically go to gmail.com, enter in the fake email address, and hit "lost password". A password recovery email would then go to your Comcast email, and you can then hijack the fake email address back. Once you've hijacked it, you can see what sort of activity the fake email was used for--likely used to send spam email to your friends.

But again, chances are, the initial contact from "Google" was likely a phishing attack.

Anyone can create a Gmail account with any combination of letters and numbers not already in use.

They need not have access to any of your current information.

By your description, a Gmail account could have been created and a random comcast email was listed as the backup email account. Whether or not the backup email account was actually verified/activated is up in the air.

Again, sounds like a phishing attack.

quote:

I received a notice from Google last night...

How was that notice received?

SMS/text

Email "from Google"

As a prompt/pop up when you logged into Google services

Google message in your Google profile messages


Email me if you want. (discretion)

It was sent to my wife's phone via text.

Thinking it was BS / phishing she logged into her Google account not using the text, but through Google and went into the Google account and looked up the email addresses associated with that account. This funky BS email address was there listed as one of ours, but deleted and no longer accessible.

They will not provide any details about why it was deleted, etc. Don't know when it was made, why it was deleted, nothing.

And how did they link it to our comcast email? They had that listed as the back up address which is weird.

The account being closed for 'Terms of Service' violations is interesting. Might have been used for spam.

Curious - if Google deleted the account, how did you confirm it was a real email account?

Things I might do in your shoes.

1) Google that address, see if it shows up anywhere interesting

2) Assuming I know the "recovery email" address for that account and that I have access to it, I'd search there to check if it has been getting messages from Google about the account. Reason being Google mail accounts throw off all kinds of notifications of changes to the "recovery email" address associated with the account, and the trail of what changes were made to it and when, might give some hints.

3) I would change all my passwords, on everything.

quote:

Originally posted by Lord Vaalic:
It was sent to my wife's phone via text.

Thinking it was BS / phishing she logged into her Google account not using the text, but through Google and went into the Google account and looked up the email addresses associated with that account. This funky BS email address was there listed as one of ours, but deleted and no longer accessible.

Waitaminute... Y'all have joint access to the Google account in question?

Uhm...

If she suspects it's an email address you created, my questions to her would be:

• Then why did they text you, dear heart, and not me?
  
• Since you have the same access to the Google account as I, and it was you they texted, how do I know you didn't create that "secret" email account?
  
• What kind of idiot would I have to be, creating a "secret" email address under a Google account to which we both have access?

Of course, then you may be sleeping on the couch, or in an entirely different zip code, for an indeterminate time...

quote:

Originally posted by joel9507:
Curious - if Google deleted the account, how did you confirm it was a real email account?

He described that just above your post asking how they did that.

quote:

Originally posted by ensigmatic:

quote:

Originally posted by joel9507:
Curious - if Google deleted the account, how did you confirm it was a real email account?

He described that just above your post asking how they did that.

Not sure it's a valid assumption that being listed somewhere in Google's account means an address existed/has been verified. They did start verifying recovery email addresses some time ago, but when I started my first Gmail account they just took whatever you typed in. I don't know if they verify addresses you have mail forwarded to.

Anyway, it's worth knowing what part of the account record of the real account this bogus address shows up in, and when/what the recovery email address presumably associated with the bogus address might have gotten sent.