How and why are Google signing in to the outlook.com account

googleoutlook.com

I have an outlook.com e-mail account, and when signing in on account.live.com and browsing the security page, viewing recent sign-ins, I see many sign-ins and "unusual activity" originating from the United States (I am far away from the U.S.), from an IP belonging to Google.

What's happening here?

Google signing in to outlook.com account

Best Answer

This often happens when a Gmail account is set up to "gather" or collect email from Outlook.com via POP or IMAP.

It's a quite handy feature as Gmail allows you to pull those messages and have a single unified "one true in-box" for all your email accounts. Coupled with the option of configuring "sending mail as another account" with true SMTP authentication and relaying, Gmail is able to act as a desktop email client as far as Outlook.com is concerned.

My guess is at some point you did configure at least the mail fetching part on a Gmail account. If you don't own a Google account, disable POP and IMAP access, and you're done.

If you do own a Gmail account, check the settings under "account preferences" where you can stop that mail fetching without disabling POP or IMAP on Outlook.com.