Indian police will question Google over a lack of safeguards after dismantling a criminal network that created over 500,000 fake Gmail accounts to send hoax bomb threats to government offices, a police official told Reuters.
The network, uncovered in the western state of Gujarat, had been active since 2022, with police arresting two individuals and seizing 513,847 Gmail IDs and passwords. Vivek Bheda, a senior cybercrime official, described the scale of fake accounts as “unprecedented” and said police would formally designate Google as a subject of the investigation. They will ask Google to implement policy changes to prevent such safeguards from being bypassed.
The investigation began after a bomb threat email was received by the Gujarat state government on September 10, just days before the BRICS summit in New Delhi. The email also threatened countries cooperating with India during the summit.
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One of the arrested individuals was in contact with a buyer in Bangladesh who purchased batches of accounts and paid partly in cryptocurrency. Each fraudulent account employed two-factor authentication, raising concerns about how the criminal network managed to implement this security measure for such a large number of accounts.
India, one of Google’s largest user markets, has seen increasing scrutiny of the tech giant. Authorities found a pattern of criminals misusing its web development platform, Firebase, for financial scams. The country’s cybercrime losses exceed $2 billion annually, prompting law enforcement to examine technology platforms that may enable such crimes more closely.
As the investigation progresses, it remains unclear what legal charges or penalties Google might face. The company, owned by Alphabet Inc., did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
