Hi,

Yesterday when leaving the office, I closed all application windows but left the computer running. This morning I found the Google App for my Gmail open with a view of my inbox.

I thought that maybe I forgot to close this yesterday. Just to check I also retrieved activity information from Gmail. As "recent activity" it listed my current connection as "0 minutes ago".

However, before that it said there was also activity 8 hours ago (in the middle of the night!) And before that, there was activity 14 hours ago (when I left the office yesterday.)

In each case access was via browser. The IP addresses were all the same , and in each case with an asterisk (*) that "indicates activity from the current session".

Is it possible that the Gmail app "phoned home" in the middle of the night? Can it start itself in my absence? And how would it know my password for logging into my mail?

Gmail gets updates automatically while you have the browser active. However, if you don't "touch" the page, it stops updating (and it reactivates once you go back to Gmail, so you get the newests mails faster).
I don't know why that could happen.
Each time you refresh Gmail it doesn't send your password. Once you are logged in -basically- the authorization is via cookies.

Thank you for your reply. I was hoping that someone might have experienced something similar with the Gmail app so that I would not feel so confused.

I have changed the password to my Gmail account. This morning when I checked recent activity there was nothing unusual.