In the morning, as I was sipping a cup of hot tea and browsing the news that filled the social media, I was stopped by news that was not entirely new, but it made me forget myself and make my tongue sting from the heat of the tea. The title was shocking: “Google Account Data Hacked and Leaked in September Confirmed.”
At first I thought it was one of those posts that exaggerated as usual, but when I opened up the details, I realized that the story was bigger than I imagined.
In late September 2025, Google announced a huge leak that affected the data of 2.5 billion Gmail accounts around the world, due to a security flaw in a system belonging to an external company called (Salesforce) that Google uses to manage its customer relationships. A few weeks later, in October, a new leak emerged of more than 183 million accounts, some of which were found to contain passwords that were offered for sale on dark forums.
In other words, if you have a Google account, the likelihood that your data was on the list is not small at all. The news spread like wildfire, and reactions varied. Google came out to confirm that “the servers are secure, and there was no direct hacking, but rather the data was leaked from a third party.” An explanation similar to someone saying: “I did not break the cup, but it broke while I was carrying it”!
Since that day, every notification I receive from Google causes me a little anxiety, especially when the famous message appears: “Signed in from an unknown device.” In an instant, questions start running through my head: Who entered? Where are you from? Why now? Just seconds later, another message arrives: “Your account has been locked.” It’s as if Google itself is hacking and fixing at the same time!
People dealt with the situation in different ways; There are those who change their password seven times a day, and there are those who said with confidence: “No one will care about hacking me!”, and there are those who tried to be smart and set a long password full of symbols, numbers, and letters… and then forgot it after a few minutes.
After the incident, Google advised users to switch to what are known as “passkeys” instead of traditional passwords. Nice advice in principle, but the reality is different. How will we save digital keys, when we sometimes forget where we put the real car keys?
The issue, in essence, is not just a hack, but a recurring scene in our digital lives. The company says security is a shared responsibility, and users blame it, while hackers celebrate in the dark corners of the Internet.
Although Google denied that a direct hack had occurred, investigations revealed that most of the leaks came from users’ devices themselves, after they were infected with malicious software that collected old passwords and offered them for sale without their owners’ knowledge.
Despite all this, Google acted quickly; It sent official warnings, advised changing passwords, activating two-step verification, and launched a massive digital security awareness campaign. However, the scene remains somewhat ironic: millions of people around the world experienced a digital panic because they had not changed their password since 2012!
Today’s password has become like the old key that is still in your pocket, even though you changed the door of the house. We use the same word in the mail, on the phones, at work, and then we wonder why our lives have become so exposed.
But amid this technical noise, the human side remains clear. Technology is not evil, but it reflects our habits. We were the ones who voluntarily gave her our secrets, pictures, and feelings, and then we were angry when she betrayed us. As the saying goes: “The blame lies with the one who handed over the key.”
Perhaps the real lesson is not in the fear of penetration, but in awareness and balance. Instead of living in a state of panic with every notification that says: “You have logged in from an unknown location,” let us learn to live a more mature relationship with technology. In the end, when Google asks me to “update the password,” I smile and say to myself: This time I will choose a strong password.. No one will know it.. not even me.
* Technical expert
