Adwords Account Hijacked

google in process of issuing credit/refund

[gomblue]

My Adwords account was hijacked. My password was probably harvested somewhere.

Google is in process of issuing credit or refund. $x,#*$! involved.

It sounds like Google will not tell me what really happened. I would need to subpoena to get details. I don't know if they will prosecute or not.

My advice is to use a strong password - and change it frequently.

An old campaign was turned on. It had been paused. A new ad group was created with keywords relating to "i phones". Traffic went to a site with a few simple links, and then traffic was encouraged to move on to a shopping cart site.

The daily budget went from $0 to $200 to $600 to $900, or something like that.

The dates of account changes was something like 3/24, then 3/26, then 3/28.

Google notified me at that time that the account had suspicious activity and would be suspended.

It won't be turned on for another week. LOST SALES on my ecommerce site.

Google does not suggest that I create a new account with new campaigns - as I will lose history and the quality ratings of my ads would change.

If anyone has any advice as to what I can/should do now, please post. At this point, I've changed passwords, run antivirus and malware programs. Nothing found.

Changes were made in mass, so Adwords Editor might have been used.

My advice - have very good passwords and change them frequently.

[trinorthlighting]

Good point, the only thing I would add is to protect your own person PC as well. If you do not have good spyware and virus protection, someone could install a keylogger on your PC.

[netmeg]

Don't just check access to your AdWords - if you are using that login for any other Google product (gmail, calendar, analytics, etc) check those too, and check who has access to them.

[outland88]

My advice is to use a strong password - and change it frequently.

The last time I tried changing passwords in Google Adwords it was a total nightmare. I now have two different sign-in passwords for the same account. The old password and the new one. When I sought Google help they just kept sending me the same form message that appeared with the password change. I couldn't get into the account for two weeks so it was difficult getting help. Finally it seemed after the two weeks it processed through the system and I ended up with both passwords. A simple thing like shouldn't be so difficult. I better pause the account before I do any more password changes. Basically anyone wanting to hack the account can come through with the old or new password.

P.S. - Even e-mail boxes I deleted years ago in the account still receive mail from Adwords as if they were never deleted.

P.S. - Why do you have to go outside the actual account to make changes to the security? This has abuse written all over it especially with the public profile thingy.

[AdWordsAdvisor]

An old campaign was turned on. It had been paused. A new ad group was created with keywords relating to "i phones". [...] Google notified me at that time that the account had suspicious activity and would be suspended. [...] If anyone has any advice as to what I can/should do now, please post. [...]

I also think it is a good safeguard for advertisers to check into their accounts with some frequency, just to make sure that everything is in order - both to check that everything that they did set is running as they had anticipated - and, also, to scan for things that they did not create, settings that they did not make, etc.

AWA

[gomblue]

One feature that would have helped would be like a system restore function. Restore all campaigns back to a prior date. Google customer service stated that this is not an option currently.

Still waiting for my account to be re-activated. Losing sales until then.

[netmeg]

There's no system restore. However, you *can* back up your account via the AdWords Editor; if you do that every now and then, you could at least restore the state of the account as of the date of the last backup.