Warning to All 1.8bn Gmail Users Over Password Hack; 5 Ways to Know Your Google Account Password Has Been Compromised; AI Has a Problem – It’s Hallucinating, and More!
Every day, we scan the tech world for interesting news, sometimes from outside the tech world. Every Thursday, we feature news articles that grabbed our attention over the past week. We hope you find this week’s ‘Thursday Newsbytes’ informative and interesting!
Warning to all 1.8bn Gmail users over password hack: ‘You have seven days to act’
Gmail users have been hit by a torrent of phishing scams in recent months — but Google says don’t panic if you fall for one.
Even if you’re locked out of your account by one of these password-stealing scams, the tech giant says you can still regain access for up to a week.
All users need to do is ensure they have a recovery phone number or email set up in their accounts, which will allow them to answer security questions and verify their identity.
The public service announcement comes just weeks after Google confirmed a ‘sophisticated’ attack targeting all of its 1.8 billion Gmail users.
The phishing scam was first reported by Nick Johnson, a developer for the cryptocurrency platform Ethereum.
Johnson shared a screenshot of an email that appeared to come from a legitimate Google address, claiming he’d been served a subpoena and needed to give up access to his account.
A Google spokesperson told DailyMail.com: ‘We’re aware of this class of targeted attack from this threat actor and have rolled out…
5 ways to know your Google account password has been compromised
For a lot of us, Google plays an outsize role in digital life. Through its various apps and services, Google handles our online search, our email, digital photos, cloud storage, browser history, and then some. An active Google account is a lot of personal information in one place, making it a potential treasure trove for bad actors.
Google’s got measures in place to prevent unauthorized account access (remember to always use 2FA!), but no security is perfect. Someone getting hold of your Google account password could be relatively catastrophic — but if that does happen, there’ll be signs to look our for. Here are five clear indications your Google account password has been compromised.
1. Your old password doesn’t work anymore
This is an obvious one: if you can no longer access your Google account using the password you most recently set for it, it’s possible someone else has accessed your account and changed your password.
If this happens to you, you can visit Google’s account recovery page to try to regain access. Google recommends trying this using a familiar device in a familiar location — a phone or computer you’ve accessed that account with before, from a location where you’ve previously logged in.
2. Notifications asking if you just signed in …
The AI Industry Has a Huge Problem: the Smarter Its AI Gets, the More It’s Hallucinating
That’s not good.
Artificial intelligence models have long struggled with hallucinations, a conveniently elegant term the industry uses to denote fabrications that large language models often serve up as fact.
And judging by the trajectory of the latest “reasoning” models, which the likes of Google and AI have designed to “think” through a problem before answering, the problem is getting worse — not better.
As the New York Times reports, as AI models become more powerful, they’re also becoming more prone to hallucinating, not less. It’s an inconvenient truth as users continue to flock to AI chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, using it for a growing array of tasks. By having chatbots spew out dubious claims, all those people risk embarrassing themselves or worse.
Worst of all, AI companies are struggling to nail down why exactly chatbots are generating more errors than before — a struggle that highlights the head-scratching fact that even AI’s creators don’t quite understand how the tech actually works.
The troubling trend challenges the industry’s broad assumption that AI models will become more powerful and reliable as they scale up.
And the stakes couldn’t be higher, as companies continue to pour tens of billions of dollars into building out AI infrastructure for larger and more powerful “reasoning” models.
To some experts, hallucinations may be inherent to the tech itself, making the problem practically impossible to overcome…
Bots now account for more online shop traffic than real humans
The internet has entered a new era where automated traffic now accounts for more web activity than human users, new research says.
Radware’s 2025 ecommerce Bot Threat Report claims the majority of traffic to online stores during the 2024 holiday season didn’t come from people. It came from bots.
For the first time, automated programs – ranging from simple scripts to AI-enhanced digital agents – accounted for 57% of all traffic, surpassing human visitors on e-commerce websites.
A smarter generation of bad bots
The report highlights the ongoing evolution of malicious bots, as nearly 60% now use behavioral strategies designed to evade detection, such as rotating IP addresses and identities, using CAPTCHA farms, and mimicking human browsing patterns, making them difficult to identify without advanced tools.
The only effective counter is equally intelligent detection – AI-powered defenses that can learn and adapt. Businesses must reassess their security stack and look beyond basic filters to solutions offering advanced DDoS protection and intelligent traffic monitoring…
Americans lose billions of dollars every year to fraud, many of them are older.
Imagine a 71-year-old retiree who falls for an online scam and loses every cent of his entire 401(k) and savings.The magnitude of this loss would put his entire financial future at risk.
It can happen: According to the FBI, the elderly population loses more than $3 billion per year to scams.
If you or a loved one has fallen victim to a financial scam, the very first thing to do is immediately report the crime to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the FBI.
Losing a retirement nest egg
Losing your retirement nest egg due to a scam can be financially devastating. Facing the situation head-on can help you right the ship.
For starters, stop the bleeding. When you discover you’ve fallen for a scam…
Thanks for reading this week’s Thursday Newbytes. We hope these articles were informative, interesting, fun, and helpful.
Love you guys, in this scammy world you are the only ones we can trust. I have been with you forever and you guys and gals ROCK!!!!! You have never let me down. You make it so much easier for those of us who only think we know what we are doing. In this fast changing computer landscape you are a god send.