Indian Police to Query Google Over 500,000 Fake Gmail IDs
Police to investigate Google's security lapses after uncovering a network of fake Gmail accounts used to send hoax bomb threats to government offices
Indian police will question Google over a lack of safeguards after uncovering a network of more than 500,000 fake Gmail accounts used to send hoax bomb threats to government offices in Gujarat.
The police official, Vivek Bheda, said that the scale of fake Gmail accounts in use is unprecedented and that they will write to Google to ask them to make policy changes to prevent such incidents in the future.
The investigation began after a bomb threat email was received by the Gujarat state government on September 10, days ahead of the BRICS summit in New Delhi. The email threatened countries cooperating with India during the summit, but the threats proved false.
Two individuals have been arrested in connection with the case, and police have found that each fraudulent account employed two-factor authentication, an extra security step offered by Google to keep accounts safe.
Google is already under scrutiny in India for its web development platform, Firebase, being misused for financial scams.
The police are concerned about how the criminal network managed to set up and manage such a large number of fake accounts, and Google's role in the investigation is set to be formally designated soon.
India's cybercrime causes losses running into more than $2 billion a year from financial scams, and the country's law enforcement has been increasingly tackling technology platforms seen to have been exploited to enable such crimes.
We will write to Google, ask them to make some policy changes so (safeguards) cannot be bypassed.
The Gujarat police have not yet commented on what legal charges or penalties Google could face in the investigation.
Google has not commented on the matter so far.