Learn what to do if your email has been hacked so you can stop these scammers quickly. You may get an urgent message from a friend or family member who received a suspicious email from you. They may ask if you sent the email. But you may be able to spot signs of trouble before you get tipped off by a friend. Here are three indicators that your email account has likely been hacked. Your email also may contain a wealth of information about your bank account, credit cards, and other financial accounts.
A hacked email can put you and your email contacts at risk for identity theft and bank account or credit card fraud. If you think your email has been hacked, take quick action to minimize the damage.
Wondering what to do when your email is hacked? Here are four steps you can take right now to regain control of your account, banish the hacker, and help protect yourself in the future.
The first step: Take back control of your account. If the hacker has locked you out, you may have to contact your email service provider for help. You will probably have to provide an array of information to prove your identity and regain control of your email. Tell the colleagues, friends, and family in your email contact list that your email has been hacked.
Warn them to delete any suspicious messages that come from your account. Also tell them not to open applications, click on links, share credit card information, or send money. To prevent this, you should take these steps:. Finally, you can put a few simple measures in place to make it less likely that your email account gets hacked again. The ubiquitous nature of email combined with its continued growth makes your accounts a tempting target for hackers. If you become the victim of a hacked email account, here's what you need to do to remedy the situation.
As noted by the FTC's guide on hacked email, the first thing you should do if your account gets hacked is to run an end-to-end antivirus scan. Skip the "quick scan" setting in favor of a deep scan to identify and eliminate not only all forms of malware including Trojans , spyware , and keyloggers that could be tracking your keystrokes even after the hack has been identified and potentially unwanted applications.
Hackers don't just want access to your account so they can send your friends embarrassing messages — they're looking for ways to scam you out of money or commit credit card fraud. For example, hackers target businesses that regularly send funds via wire transfer. Once an email account is compromised, they are able to send their own unauthorized transfers.
When it comes to your email accounts, the sooner you run an antivirus scan , the better. It's important to make sure you're clean before you change any of your other sensitive information to avoid restarting the cycle. Once your computer is free of malware, it's time to change your password. If you've lost access to your account, you may need to contact the email provider directly, prove who you are and ask for a password reset. Choose a new password that is markedly different from your old one and make sure it doesn't contain strings of repeated characters or numbers.
Stay away from passwords that have obvious ties to your name, birthday, or similar personal details. Hackers can easily find this information and often use it in their first brute force attempts to access your account. Your password should be unique for each account, complex i.
If you need help creating new passwords or managing all your new complex ones, use a secure password manager to safely save them. Changing your passwords with other online accounts is critical as well. Payment-based accounts such as Amazon, Netflix, credit card companies and even the local library need a reset. Be sure to update each of your passwords to prevent hackers from compromising these accounts as well. Keeping these other accounts secure is important.
Secondary services are ultimately the much more valuable targets in these security breaches. Hackers look for information that can help them find usernames and passwords to important sites, like online banking or retirement accounts. Consider changing the usernames and passwords for accounts that may be at risk. In your email account, review the Sent, Trash, or Deleted folders. You might be able to uncover clues about what the hacker did.
Search for emails that the hacker sent from your account, or that the hacker may have viewed and then deleted. In your social media account, check for messages that the hacker might have sent from your account. Add this infographic to your site: 1.
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