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Ask HN: What info someone can access if they know my Gmail password?

2 pointsby sarathywebover 5 years ago
Today, our placement cell of University forwarded a message about the recruitment process of a company<p>The company asked the students to create a account on their website with the same password of their personal email ID in their message.<p>Here&#x27;s the message<p><pre><code> Hi, Please find attached the [Company Name] Application Process Guide and instruction below. Please request students to go there the instruction and attached ppt before taking the test. Please ask them to use Chrome to access the link for test and once they open Chrome they have to type [Registration Link] and start registering please ask them to keep trying to login twice or thrice if they face any error&#x2F;problem. Note: Please ask them to give their respective roll number as user name and let the password be the one which they use for their personal mail to access. They have to give only their personal email id while registering and not their college id because all the test links will be set to their personal email id only. </code></pre> Majority of the students are using Gmail. So, what information they can access if they know my Gmail password?

4 comments

elmerfudover 5 years ago
It depends how many Google services you use but it could be a lot. This could be your mail, your docs, calendar, messenger, voice, etc... Plus other services that use Google auth.<p>This request seems very improper for them to request that you set a password the same as their personal email. This actually violates security best practices. I would be very suspicious of why they are requesting this. Also that they specifically state that the registration process may encounter errors and to keep doing it is also suspicious. Are you sure this is a legitimate request? It appears to me a phishing attempt to me.<p>If this is legitimate, this company and your University need to be named so others can avoid these kind of bad practices.
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duiker101over 5 years ago
I&#x27;d answer that giving out password is a security breach and they need to rework their process. Honestly, if they actually are asking for that, I wouldn&#x27;t want to work with them.
greg_aover 5 years ago
That&#x27;s weird they ask for that.<p>You can setup a 2FA so that they would need access to your phone as well.<p>Also, make sure that the email is legit. It could be an attempt to gain access to your account.
GrumpyNlover 5 years ago
Wow, normally you only see this in mails from Nigeria.