GMail security (or lack thereof)

I have a GMail account. I don't use it. I don't like Google's policies about keeping/filtering email. But I have a GMail account. Maybe one day I'll use it. They sort of force you to have one to do a lot of things, such as blogging on Blogger, which this blog is. Sigh.

Anyway, today I logged in to my GMail account, out of curiosity to see if I had any mail. I have a WHOLE LOT of spam, which is what prompts this blog post. 738 messages, as you can see in the screen shot to the left.

I have not given out my GMail account to anyone. I never send mail from that account. I use it only to log into Blogger, to save maps in Google maps, etc. So really the only entity that has my GMail address is Google. Evidently, they have been hacked/compromised or else they're selling my email address to the spammers directly. How else would this email address wind up on spam lists?! I tried searching for it (my address, and no, I'm not posting it here for spambots to harvest). There is no way I can think of for a spambot to have gotten this email address except through Google itself.

Kind of scary. Now I'm really not going to use my GMail account.