5 Million 'Old' Gmail Accounts Reportedly Leaked to the Masses

Hackers have posted a database containing the user credentials for millions of Gmail accounts on a bitcoin online forum, according to Russian media outlets.

The list was published Tuesday evening.

A member of the message board -- the Bitcoin Security online forum – claims more than 60 percent of the accounts corresponding to these logins can be opened successfully.

The 4.93 million accounts allegedly affected belong to English, Russian and Spanish users.

This incident follows assertions that more than 4.6 million Russian Mail.ru accounts and over 1.25 million Yandex inboxes were compromised and then published on the Bitcoin Security forum.

Those leaks contained mostly inactive accounts and passwords that had been collected over a long period of time through “phishing” schemes and malicious software, the email companies said.

Mashable downplayed the security threat on Wednesday.

“The passwords seem to be old, and they don't appear to actually belong to Gmail accounts. Instead, it seems that many of the passwords were taken from websites where users used their Gmail addresses to register, according to some of the leak's victims as well as security experts,” the publication reports.

A Mashable employee noticed his old Gmail password, which he hasn't used in years, in the dump.

A Google spokesman said there is "no evidence that our systems have been compromised.”

A website called isleaked.com allows users to check if their email address is among those leaked, according to NetworkWorld.