Activity Monitor
Gmail has recently added a surveillance tool that allows you to keep a check on the sign-ins and sign-outs from your account. If you scroll down to the bottom of your Gmail page once you’ve logged in to your account, you’ll notice something like :
“Last account activity: xx hours ago at IP xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx”
This is an excellent feature that lets you police your personal email account from intruding family members, hackers and stalkers. It is one of the most powerful undetectable security tools used to prevent hackers from logging in whenever you forget to log out at an internet café. It is an ideal security tool for both personal as well as networked PCs.
Activity monitor alerts you as soon as your account is compromised. To check up for the unwanted sign-ins to your account, all you need to do is first log in to your Gmail id. Then scroll down at the bottom of the page. If your account has been accessed without your knowledge, it will be reflected in form of a notification. This notification will carry the details of the time of the last account activity. Further, it will also display the IP address from where your account was accessed. The notification will appear in the form “This account is open in 1 other location at this IP (xx.xx.xxx.xx)”.
This is one of the most reliable features offered by Gmail that alerts you about the intruding activities right on time. When you click on the hyper link given at the bottom of your inbox, you will get thorough details on all the activities that took place without your permission. This feature is available for free to all the Gmail users.