Google says Gmail security is “strong and effective” as it denies major breach

The sky is falling, and Gmail has supposedly been hacked to bits by malicious parties unknown. Or has it? Reports circulated last week claiming that Gmail was the subject of a major data breach, citing a series of warnings Google has distributed and increasing reports of phishing attacks. The hysteria was short-lived, though. In a brief post on its official blog, Google says that Gmail's security is "strong and effective," and reports to the contrary are mistaken.

This story seems to have developed due to a random confluence of security events. Google experienced a Gmail data breach in June, but the attack was limited to the company's corporate Salesforce server. The hacker was able to access publicly available information like business names and contact details, but no private informat