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Boomerang uses AI to help you write emails people will read
Why don't you get a response to every email you write? It's possible your recipient is busy. Maybe it didn't reach them. Or maybe, just maybe, you didn't write a quality email in the first place.
Second man pleads guilty to breaking into celebrity accounts
No, the convictions over celebrity account breaches aren't over yet. Chicago man Edward Majerczyk has agreed to plead guilty to using phishing scams to fool more than 300 people into compromising their Gmail and iCloud accounts, including 30 celebrities. The bargain reduces his sentence from a maximum of 5 years in prison to between 6 to 12 months. We'll learn the extent of his time behind bars in a few weeks, when the case transfers from California to Illinois for sentencing.
Russian provider casts doubt on email hacking claims
Yesterday, Reuters reported that tens of millions of email addresses and account passwords were stolen in an apparent data breach -- but as is often the case, there's more to this story than meets the eye. According to Motherboard, which spoke with both Hold Security (the company that received the data in question) and security expert Troy Hunt, it's not at all clear that the email providers were hacked. It's even possible this data isn't legitimate.
Hackers are trading millions of Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo logins
Email services including Gmail, Yahoo Mail and Hotmail have fallen victim to a hack, exposing usernames and passwords for millions of users. According to Reuters, a huge data breach consisting of some 273.3 million online accounts has been reported by security expert Alex Holden of Hold Security. All told, the data breach contains 57 million accounts for the Russian email provider Mail.ru, along with 40 million Yahoo Mail credentials, 33 million Hotmail accounts and 24 million Gmail accounts.
Gmail on Android is ready for your Exchange account
Gmail threw the doors open when it added support for non-Google email accounts, but there was one glaring omission: you couldn't get Microsoft Exchange support on all devices. Not consistently, anyway. What if you want to get your work email without turning to another app? Relax. Google is trotting out an update to Gmail for Android that supports Exchange on all devices, so your corporate reports can live in the same app as your personal messages. The update isn't available for everyone right away, so be patient if you're eager to move your correspondence.
Google Inbox can keep up with your changing calendar
Ever struggled to keep up with a calendar event as people email changes in their plans? You won't have to panic after today. Google is updating Inbox with a smarter approach to Google Calendar events that pools together all the emails from an event and shows changes in one place. If someone can't make it or the time changes, you shouldn't be caught off-guard.
Google apologizes again for its ill-fated 'Mic Drop' prank
Every year Google insists on unleashing a storm of April Fool's "jokes," but this time one had a problem. Last night its Gmail "Mic Drop" feature that responded with a dismissive GIF and closed the conversation permanently had to be pulled after user complaints. Now in a second update to its blog post, Google has acknowledged its mistake, focusing on three points: It should've asked users before turning on the feature and/or added a confirmation step, it placed the Mic Drop button too close to other more familiar elements, and there was a bug that could cause the regular send button to still send Mic Drops. Hopefully any damage wasn't too catastrophic, and Google says it's working on bringing Mic Dropped messages with further replies back to user's inboxes.
Google kills Gmail joke on April Fools' after user backlash
Like all jokes on April Fools' Day, some are received better than others. Pranksters usually mean well, but there's always someone that pushes the envelope a little too far, upsetting the recipient. Google fell into this trap today after launching a new "feature" for Gmail users called Mic Drop. It added a secondary "Send" button to the web interface, which would exchange a humorous GIF with all of the thread's participants. More importantly, it also muted the chain so that the user couldn't see any follow-up emails in their inbox. Just like a classic mic drop, really.
Google enhances Gmail security and beefs up its warning systems
Google is trying to make Gmail as safe as it can possibly be with a few new features designed to prevent phishing, malware and hacking. This week, Google is rolling out an updated warning system on links sent through Gmail that may lead to unsafe sites. If you click a dangerous link in Gmail, you'll see a full-page warning with routes to more information and ways to protect your computer.
Man pleads guilty to hacking celebrity accounts for photos
The celebrities affected by the massive nude photo leak in 2014 got some answers today. A 36-year-old man from Pennsylvania named Ryan Collins has been charged with computer hacking felony for infiltrating over 50 iCloud and 72 Gmail accounts. He has also agreed to plead guilty to one count of unauthorized access to a protected computer, according to the US Attorney's Office of the Central District of California. In his plea deal, Collins admitted to executing a phishing scheme to obtain celebs' usernames and passwords from November 2012 to September 2014. Once he got access to their accounts, he searched for and stole explicit images. In some cases, he even downloaded people's entire iCloud backups.
Google's Inbox gets 'smart replies' on the web
With "smart replies," Google's Inbox app gave us an easy way to respond to emails on our phones without typing. Now, that feature is headed to Inbox on the web. For the most part, it works the same way: When viewing an email, you can choose from three common responses at the bottom of your window. Tapping one instantly fills out a reply message, which you can edit if need be. Google says 10 percent of Inbox mobile users are already using smart replies, but it'll be interesting to see if desktop users latch onto it more.
Gmail can scan images to stop confidential data being leaked
Businesses do a lot to secure their operations, but often it just takes one rogue employee to send themselves confidential files and they're doomed. Google launched its Data Loss Prevention (DLP) service to help companies avoid such a calamity, and now it's getting even more powers to avoid data losses. With the update, Gmail will be able to scan documents with optical character recognition to make sure attached images don't contain sensitive information like social security numbers or passwords.
Google Inbox adds two time-saving snooze options
One of the great things about Google Inbox's snooze function is being able to set the exact date and time to resurface emails you intend to read and reply to later. Sometimes, though, you just want to get non-urgent emails out of the way without thinking too hard. This latest Inbox by Gmail update allows you to do just that. Now, when you choose to toss a digital missive into your read-it-much-much-later pile, you can choose from two new snooze times: Later this week and This weekend. And since different people have different weekends, you can choose a particular day when you think you'll be ready to face what you've put off.
Gmail for Android shows your agenda alongside calendar invites
Google is getting better and better at integrating its stable of services, making the connections between apps like Gmail and Google Calendar tighter and smarter. Today, the company announced a pretty handy new feature for Gmail on Android that makes it easier to respond to calendar invites: those invitations now include a one-tap option to show your agenda so you can decide if you can make the meeting without having to click over to your calendar. It's not ground-breaking, but it's helpful -- if Google already has visibility into your calendar, it might as well show you that info in a helpful way. The new feature will work both with Google Calendar as well as Microsoft Exchange.
'Gmailify' gives you Gmail service without the Gmail address
Last March, Google began allowing its users to link their Gmail account with their Yahoo! and Outlook accounts so that all of their emails could be accessed from a single screen. The company announced today that it is expanding the feature, called Gmailify. Now, those outside addresses will function a lot more like their native gmail account. They'll now be protected by Google's spam filters, organized like the native inbox and even get Google Now cards. Basically, Google has made it so that these accounts look and act more like Gmail -- aside from the domain name -- when accessed through the Android app. Users just need to manually enable the new feature by linking their outside account to Gmail.
Gmail gets visual cues to alert you to suspect emails
Google is making an annual event out of Safer Internet Day, offering tools and incentives to help keep its users safe. Today, Mountain View is adding a couple of visual cues to Gmail to alert you to potential email risks. First, you'll notice a broken red lock icon in the corner of the compose window when responding to a source that's not encrypted. Clicking the icon will remind you to double check before passing along sensitive info. Second, if you receive and email from an unauthenticated sender, the profile image will be replaced by a question mark. Of course, not all messages that Gmail flags will be malicious, but it doesn't hurt to be cautious.
Gmail has over 1 billion active users
Does it feel like virtually everyone you know has a Gmail address? You're not alone. While discussing its latest fiscal results, Alphabet has confirmed that there are now over 1 billion active Gmail users per month, or 100 million more than there were last May. That's a big milestone, but it's almost surprising that Google's email service didn't hit the magic figure earlier. After all, Facebook reached the 1 billion mark last summer, and it's a non-essential social network -- you'd think a vital tool like email would get there first. Clearly, Facebook is a more common bond that transcends your choice of email providers.
Google's Inbox app now has smarter search results
Google's Inbox may take a bit of getting used to, especially if you've been using the plain vanilla Gmail interface for years, but once you dig in there's a lot of powerful and useful features to find. (Some of them can get a little weird, though.) Today, Google is releasing some tweaks to make Inbox's search feature more useful. For starters, when you look for something like a shipping tracking number, frequent flyer number, hotel reservation, bill or a number of other pieces of info that are buried somewhere in your email account, Inbox will surface it at the top of your search results.
Gmail's Inbox app makes it easier to share travel info
If you fancy Google's Inbox app to wrangle your Gmail, sharing travel details is about to get even easier. Mountain View is rolling out an update to the service that lets you attach those handy card-like Trip Bundles to emails with a tap. This should make giving colleagues, friends and family all of your travel info even quicker.
Yahoo wants to manage your Gmail account too
When Yahoo announced two months ago that it would add third-party email support to its newly launched Mail app, only Hotmail, Outlook and AOL accounts were supported. Now, however, Gmail -- arguably its biggest rival -- has joined the party too. Thanks to Yahoo Mail's new smarts, the app won't just fetch the most recent 200 messages when you add it -- it's actually able to access your entire Gmail archive; attachments included. And since you'll have your Gmail working with the Yahoo Mail app, you'll be able to search across all your contacts and accounts in one unified interface. Other features of the new Yahoo Mail can also now work with your Gmail account -- they include a smarter contacts manager that'll automatically add email recipients based on your history, plus the new password-free Yahoo Account Key sign-in method. Gmail support in Yahoo Mail is available today in both iOS and Android apps plus, of course, the Yahoo Mail website itself.
