Gmail signing out by itself (or not by me)

Calypze

In recent times, it seems like my Gmail account has started to sign out by itself, without me doing anything. And not after long sessions of inactivity, could be anything from a few hours to a few minutes. It doesn't happen all the time, but from time to time. Often enough to make me suspect not everything is alright.

Why is that? When I sign in again and check the recent activity, it says that other sessions are in use, and offer me to sign out of them. But among the IPs having been signed in recently, it doesn't show any other than my own.

Could my Gmail account be compromised in any way? How can I find out? What can I do about this?

kryyst

The two likely scenarios are:

You have google/ig or gmail as your home page and you are opening multiple browser tabs/sessions at the same time on the same or multiple machines (say computer, and smart phone) it could cause this to happen.

Or your cookies/cache has something corrupted and needs to be flushed.

If it's the first the only solution is to not do that. If it's the second clear your cache and cookies in your browser.

It's doubtful that you are being hacked and I say that becuase if you are being hacked and have multiple bad password guesses gmail will require you to login and do a capture verification after so many failed. If you are having to do the capture thing frequently it's possible there is something else going on.

Calypze

kryyst wrote:

The two likely scenarios are:

You have google/ig or gmail as your home page and you are opening multiple browser tabs/sessions at the same time on the same or multiple machines (say computer, and smart phone) it could cause this to happen.

Or your cookies/cache has something corrupted and needs to be flushed.

If it's the first the only solution is to not do that. If it's the second clear your cache and cookies in your browser.

It's doubtful that you are being hacked and I say that becuase if you are being hacked and have multiple bad password guesses gmail will require you to login and do a capture verification after so many failed. If you are having to do the capture thing frequently it's possible there is something else going on.

Thanks for the reply.

I do have multiple tabs open in Firefox, but only one for Gmail. Though on the other hand, maybe having tabs for Blogspot blogs and Google-searchings open count as multiple sessions.

What is a "capture verification"? I recall that many months ago, when I signed in I sometimes had to enter letters and numbers from an image in order to get in. You know the kind of stuff that forums put up for registerers in order to prevent bots from creating accounts. Is that what you refer to as "capture verification"? Is that the result of repeated hacking attempts?

kryyst

That is the Capture thing I'm referring to and Gmail requires that you re-sign in every so often depending on the number of logins and after to many attempted logins it'll also ask you to use the capture verification. Seeing it frequently doesn't mean you are being hacked, it means you could be hacked, it also could mean that you have a bad password in your cache file that's trying to sign into google.

Like I said clear your cache and see if that solves the problem.

Calypze

kryyst wrote:

That is the Capture thing I'm referring to and Gmail requires that you re-sign in every so often depending on the number of logins and after to many attempted logins it'll also ask you to use the capture verification. Seeing it frequently doesn't mean you are being hacked, it means you could be hacked, it also could mean that you have a bad password in your cache file that's trying to sign into google.

Like I said clear your cache and see if that solves the problem.

I've ran a CCleaner cleaning which among other things clears the Firefox cache. And it doesn't seem prone to sign out by itself anymore.

As for the capture verification issue, that was a while ago. I've ran many CCleaner since then. I guess it's impossible to know in retrospect if it was bad cache trying to sign in or if it was hacking attempts. Though can the cache really try to sign in by itself even though I'm already signed in?

kryyst

It's not the cache is trying to sign itself in on it's own. But as you said "Though on the other hand, maybe having tabs for Blogspot blogs and Google-searchings open count as multiple sessions." Those all use cache/cookies to save google info and if one of those had bad information it would cause the issue you were describing.

Calypze

Would this apply even though I never sign into Google through these, but only through Gmail, and keeps the Gmail tab up for the whole Internet session?

Why does it cause the capture verification issue anyways?

kryyst

If you've got a bad cache file it could, bad cache files can do all sorts of weird things.

The capture verification thing is something gmial put in place so a bot couldn't sit there and try to randomly hack someones gmail password. After so many failed attemps you have to put in the capture verification and that requires human interaction. So it's designed to thwart bots.

Calypze

kryyst wrote:

If you've got a bad cache file it could, bad cache files can do all sorts of weird things.

The capture verification thing is something gmial put in place so a bot couldn't sit there and try to randomly hack someones gmail password. After so many failed attemps you have to put in the capture verification and that requires human interaction. So it's designed to thwart bots.

Yeah yeah, I understand that it is against bots. What I meant is that how come that the cache can try to sign in by itself, especially if I'm already signed in and don't have any auto-sign in activated?

PirateNinja

You should check on the bottom of your gmail to see if there is an IP you do not recognize logging in. Maybe to be safe, reset your password to something new.

Also, any program like ccleaner or otherwise that is clearing your sessions would cause this too.

Your cache files can't try to login in to your account on their own, something would need to activate them. Even then they would need to be a script or executable of sorts...most cache files are just images and code that is used only for formatting websites..nothing dynamic. If computers stored dynamic files in their cache it would ruin the purpose of a website being dynamic to begin with. So don't worry so much about your cache having something malicious in it. It's your cookies/sessions that can contain private info...but even then, they can not execute scripts.

One last note, if you have a mobile device playing with your Google account keep in mind you might log yourself out with that.

Calypze

Gravite2090 wrote:

You should check on the bottom of your gmail to see if there is an IP you do not recognize logging in. Maybe to be safe, reset your password to something new.

Also, any program like ccleaner or otherwise that is clearing your sessions would cause this too.

Your cache files can't try to login in to your account on their own, something would need to activate them. Even then they would need to be a script or executable of sorts...most cache files are just images and code that is used only for formatting websites..nothing dynamic. If computers stored dynamic files in their cache it would ruin the purpose of a website being dynamic to begin with. So don't worry so much about your cache having something malicious in it. It's your cookies/sessions that can contain private info...but even then, they can not execute scripts.

One last note, if you have a mobile device playing with your Google account keep in mind you might log yourself out with that.

I check the IPs having been signed in regularly, and to my mind, it has always come up clean.

CCleaner might then be the culprit, because I use that program quite often, though never at the same time as I use Firefox. However, I might add that the capture verification issue hasn't been up for a long time now.

I only sign into Gmail from my computer. At least I haven't used the mobile phone for it so far.