5 million Gmail account passwords leaked

About 5 million Gmail accounts’ usernames and passwords has been leaked on a Russian Bitcoin forum. This is the first time that such a large number of Gmail accounts and their credentials are leaked anywhere on the internet. According to Google representative, the leaked information is out of date and is a result of collection of data using phishing and hacking over a period of many years.
The Google representative also stated that majority of the accounts listed on the forum are suspended a long time or the password that was posted against their account was a very old password, probably associated with that account years ago. The representative also denied the fact that Google servers were somehow hacked into and the hacker got the information from them.
The Russian forum by the name of btcsec.com is a Bitcoin security forum in Russian language. The user, named tvskit, posted screenshots of the list of his database containing the Gmail account credentials. According to him, more than 60% of the credentials are working.
The leaked information includes credentials of Gmail and Google Plus. People who speak English, Russian and Spanish and use these two services of Google are in the list. Besides Google, there are also a huge number of credentials from Yandex which is a very popular and the larger search engine in Russia.
It would be a good time for Gmail users to change their passwords in order to avoid an unusual circumstances or loss of private data. If anyone wants to check whether their Gmail account is in the list of leaked information, they can visit this link and enter their Gmail address to find out.