Google has decided to increase the security aspect of their email service and has roll out alerts feature for Gmail. The latest security enhancement has been designed with the vision of keeping your inbox safe from hackers and spammers and works at the IP level.
This is how it will work, as soon as any suspicious activity is detected regarding your email account, you will see a warning in bright red colored font right below the search bar. If you desire to know more about the warning, you will have the option to click on the Show Details and preferences link.
The details part basically contains a log of the recent email related activities and access points to give you a better idea of what went wrong. From the very same window, you also have the liberty to change the password which might come in pretty handy.
As I said, it relies on the IP mechanism and matches your IP with the far geographic locations. In simpler terms, a login appearing to come from one country and occurring a few hours after a login from another country may trigger an alert. Good enough if my account is hacked from another country. But what if my fellow citizen gets hold of my account? What will happen then?
[via Gmail Blog]