gmail suspicious sign in prevented

xenoposofi's picture
Submitted by xenoposofi on Mon, 02/17/2014 - 01:25

Forums:

Hi all and congratulations for your excellent addon
I have a problem for a few months now.

I’ve notice that every time I change my ip (disconnect and reconnect router)
All my gmail accounts (about 5-7) are blocked from xnotifier (not checked) and when I login manually to them I’ve got the notorious “suspicious sign in prevented” email, and as if this wasn’t enough, after some time Gmail forced me to change my password in every account (that I had set up in xnotifier) -imagine the frustration.
Of course the “suspicious hacker” was my self and my new ip (I checked)
Additional information (after a lot of searching) this article: Hacking your own GMail account - http://zverovich.net/2012/07/10/hacking-your-own-gmail-account.html (talks about that exact FALSE POSITIVE kind of problem)

So the question is, could we have any solution or workaround with that (like old days)?
I still want to be able to change my ip from time to time (eg 5-10 times a day) for numerous reasons, and yet have no problem at all with xnotifier - just like the way it was so far (I so much miss these days) :)

Thank you in advance!

jeroen's picture

jeroen

Mon, 02/17/2014 - 07:36

I do hope you realize this has nothing to do with X-notifier...

RpD

Mon, 02/17/2014 - 12:53

How frequently do you have X-Notifier checking Gmail? ...hammering it too much is just going to get you a timeout or generate those alerts.

When Gmail creates a suspicious activity prompt which gets in the way of mail checking... X-Notifier can't very well answer that for you, ignore it, or make it go away, in the case that it might be an -actual- suspicious activity.  How would X-Notifier know the difference between real alerts and your false alert due to changing IP all the time? This situation of a false alert due to suspicious activity is something better worked out with Gmail.  Most users don't have to hide their IP address like that.

If it's not the suspicious alert getting in the way, after you change your IP... to revive X-Notifier checking. perhaps you can restart your browser (that X-Notifier is added to), or restart your computer's network connection, or both.

 

xenoposofi's picture

xenoposofi

Tue, 02/18/2014 - 22:26

I never said it’s a problem of xnotifier. Just seeking for a possible solution.

What I’ve done so far and what happened.
Check every 1 minutes Change it to check every 5 minutes. Not much of a change.
Instead of connect disconnect router, reset router. Not much of a change either.
Tried to delete ALL cookies before rechecking xnotifier after connect/disconnect. Not much of a change. (again)

Now because I’ve seen in my cookies (long time ago) something like that
google.gr[xn#gmail#mynamegmail.com] and so on...
My thought was if xnotifier can hold “special space” in my cookies, why not “talk” directly with gmail and tell “hey forget the new ip, it’s no hacker, it’s me xnotifier, can’t you see ‘I have the cookies’...”, and somehow arbitrarily I thought that was what happening so long (before google change it’s, I don’t know, security procedures whatsoever) and there was no problem change (dynamic random) ip frequently with no problem. My thought was this is happening thanks to xnotifier’s “special cookie holder”.

Anyhow I think I came up with a solution (or something like a solution) so far.
(manually) By going here https://security.google.com/settings/security/activity and click “It’s OK this is me” (something like that).
After that I change IP again (just once so far) and no problem so far.

Bottom line.
Thank you all for your time. And just so you know my intension posting all this was not “accusing” xnotifier or anything like it, but instead “helping” (as a case study provider) make it even stronger and cooler than already is. Again. Thanks every one and especially xnotifier for everything.

RpD

Wed, 02/19/2014 - 00:49

I would think that only Firefox/X-Notifier/addons are seeing X-N's 'special' cookies... not gmail; and... communicating the validity of IP changes is not really part of X-Notifier's primary 'email-checking' function.  So... you found a Google setting solution and that's kind of what we were saying you should look at... hopefully, we pointed you in that direction. And hopefully, it continues working for you.

jeroen's picture

jeroen

Wed, 02/19/2014 - 02:36

I didn't say that much..., but still agree ;-)