Google Captcha/Word Challenge

[tenui]

First let me say that I'm fairly new to the Droid... its only been a couple of days but I like what I've seen so far. That is until today when out of the blue I got a weird "Google unable to authenticate" error...

I immediately jumped to the conclusion that my gmail/google account had been hacked. I checked the "IP Details" on a PC and didn't see any connections out of my area. To be sure, I changed the password and verified all of my recovery options. Nothing out of the ordinary there...

I am prompted/challenged with the following screen 5 times. It doesn't matter if I enter the words correctly or not. My question is, is this a normal google screen or is this some sort of phising attempt to get my password. After hitting done 5 times I eventually get to a google password prompt.

I've only download maybe less than 5 apps from the market place and all were highly rated fairly common apps i.e. bubble level, bar code scanner, etc.

I'm amazed at the amount of google integration but I can not afford to have my google account hacked/stolen.

I know I am being a bit paranoid but I just don't have the confidence that this is a 'google' dialog and haven't been able to find any other documentation/screen shots on the web of this screen.

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated!

Regards,

-j

 

[mwhartman]

Moving to the X general discussion section.

Mike

 

[tenui]

My bad...

Sorry for not seeing the "X" specific forum... (We are Penn State!)

 

[mwhartman]

No problem. Today, we were BAD!!!!!!!!

 

[Technoman]

I do not recall if I got that dialog after the 2.2 upgrade or not. I do recall having to re-do all my sign on stuff either right after or shortly after the upgrade.

I am not sure there would be a reason to doubt it being authentic.

 

[tenui]

I am not sure there would be a reason to doubt it being authentic.

I am doubtful for two reasons. 1) what would cause me to suddenly not be able to authenticate if my password hadn't changed and 2) because there doesn't appear to be any code/logic behind the capthca. I can enter the exact word at each prompt or just hit done 5 times without typing anything. Both ways get me to the password prompt. If this was a webpage I would completely assume it was a phising attempt.

There just doesn't seem to be a way in Android to confirm the source of the prompt...

 

[Technoman]

I am not sure there would be a reason to doubt it being authentic.

I am doubtful for two reasons. 1) what would cause me to suddenly not be able to authenticate if my password hadn't changed and 2) because there doesn't appear to be any code/logic behind the capthca. I can enter the exact word at each prompt or just hit done 5 times without typing anything. Both ways get me to the password prompt. If this was a webpage I would completely assume it was a phising attempt.

There just doesn't seem to be a way in Android to confirm the source of the prompt...

Have you checked the list of running programs in your settings menu?

Go to settings, then "applications", and then "Running services"..

It will tell you what the system see's as running.

You could also go to the "Privacy" section under settings and perform "factory data reset". This would cause you to have to reload all your APP's and set each one back up.

If your Google account will setup clean after this, then I would suspect you are correct about it being something in an APP.

You will need to either write down all of your APP's, or install an APP called APPBrain which will provide you a listing of all of your APP's on a companion web site.

 

[tenui]

I have done 2 factory restarts. Once by holding the home key and the power key and the other with the Settings route. What I found odd in both resets that my pictures and some data was still on the device. I even did the format option with the hardware restore. Is this normal?

I'm also concerned that someone hasn't already responded that this is a normal screen. I've seen some other similar posts questioning what the dialog is actually doing on other forums. These comments all seem to be included with posts about the persons gmail account being stolen/hijacked.

If this were a normal screen I'd be ok with it. The fact that is started 3 days after successfully setting up the phone makes me suspicious.