[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbnUMxD0lCM[/youtube]

It seems like I am not the only one having the problem as you can see from the thread “HIjacked Account: Do something about it !!!” in the Google AdWords Help forum. I am linking to the cached version because the original thread seems to have been removed. Is Google trying to hide anything? I hope not.

This is definitely a serious issue which I hope Google will contact affected users regarding. Imagine someone peaking into your emails, calendars, documents and every other services which your Google Account (thanks to OpenID) can be used for. Anyone else encountering issues with your Google Account?

UPDATE: Now I have gotten two threads posted at Google Help which I did not post! One is by a user who can’t delete his/her album from Picasa Web Albums. This is definitely because he/she was “taking over” my session and I do not have permission to do so! The other is about Checkout Merchant which I totally have not used before.

UPDATE 2: I have got more threads posted under my account on Google Earth and Google Chrome help forums! I have also gotten more news from users whom experience the same issues and they all seemed to be from Singapore as well. Is this a Singapore-only issue?

From Priyan:

Dear Derick,

Just wanted to inform that when i opened google.com/notebook, instead of seeing my notes, it showed your account (See attached), like the way you see it. If you carefully read the below thread, this security issue is not just to google notebooks, but also google profile, google contacts and google help (So far).

Guyz, The danger has come and i am gonna delete all of my google account except the email (for which i need few months).

I posted the issues at security@google.com, which went unanswered. Google was a god given gift for me, but they are not caring about security issues.

Somebody here if you can help, it would be grateful.

Priyan

From Max:

Hi everyone,

Are we all based in Singapore? It could be the login server? Or is the application server the one that is getting confused?

I think they did mention something about the 2 accounts being different, either that in the process of being linked.

Under my GMAIL profile, I had Aussie Pete in my display name.

Cheers!
Max

From Peter:

Hi – yes it was very strange when I posted my question on google help…
because there was no profile created, I went in and edited it, thinking that
it was my profile (didn’t notice the email address at the top of the page
was showing Max’s address and not mine).

Once I noticed, I went back and logged in as myself with my email address
and created my own profile.

At the time, I though perhaps google was somehow defaulting to a ‘pretend’
person until my own profile was created… obviously this mustn’t be the
case.

Thanks for looping me in – very strange occurrence indeed. I also use
googleapps for many things… including more than just this one domain.

UPDATE 3: This is getting ridiculous, I am getting more users getting logged on as me on Google each day. More threads posted by not-me on AdSense and Webmaster help forums. There also seem to be more users experiencing the same issues apart from the original group that emailed me. It also seems more likely that this is really an issue affecting Singapore users only. I further suspect that this affects SingNet users only due to the invisible proxy SingNet places over your HTTP traffic which makes you take on a different public IP each time. If you are experiencing the same issues, please drop a comment stating the country you are from and your ISP. Anyone reading this thread, please help to spread the news to your friends who has a way to get to someone from Google! Thanks!

UPDATE 4: Seems like it is really an issue with SingNet. Priyan has an update over at his blog that Google has responded and fixed the issue.

Hi Priyan,

The issue you’re describing was reported by a small number of users
visiting a Google Help Center page from your ISP. As you described, those
users could become partially logged into the account of a recent viewer of
the same page from the same ISP. We have fixed the issue completely, and
we apologize for any inconvenience.

Thanks very much for reporting it to us.

Regards,
Manuel for
The Google Security Team

Check if your external IP keeps changing by refreshing the page over at WhatIsMyProxy.com. Try using proxy.singnet.com.sg:8080 as your browser proxy and problem solved.

Why Derilicious? I can’t think of anything better and besides, I guess it is the content that matters. Hope you will find this blog as useful as I think it will be. Cheers.