Email Is Hacked When I Change Password It Is Hacked Again

It seems like not a day goes by when I don't go a question from someone that boils downwards to their email account having been hacked.

Someone, somewhere, has gained access to their account and is using it to transport spam, access other online accounts, hassle contacts, and more. Sometimes passwords are changed, sometimes not. Sometimes traces are left, sometimes non. Sometimes everything in the account is erased — including contacts and saved e-mail — and sometimes not.

If that'south happening to y'all, your email business relationship has been hacked.

Here's what to do next if it happens to you.

If your electronic mail is hacked, here's how yous ready it:

1. Recover your business relationship.
2. Change your countersign.
3. Verify and/or change your business relationship recovery information.
4. Check your out-of-office letters, car-responders, forwards, and signatures.
5. Bank check all related accounts for possible compromise.
6. Let your contacts know.
7. Outset bankroll up.

And peradventure above all: learn from the experience so information technology doesn't happen again.

1. Recover your account

Log in to your account using your email provider'due south website.

If yous can log in successfully, consider yourself extremely lucky, and continue to Footstep 2 right away.

If you lot can't log in, even though you're sure you're using the correct countersign, then the hacker has probably changed your password. The countersign you know is no longer the right password.

You lot must then use the "I forgot my countersign" or equivalent  account recovery options offered past the service.

This commonly means the service will transport password-reset instructions to an alternate email address that you lot take access to, or transport a text bulletin to a mobile phone number you set up previously.

If the recovery methods don't work — because the hacker changed everything or because you no longer have admission to the one-time alternate email or telephone — you may be out of luck.

If recovery options don't work for whatever reason, your only recourse is to use the client service phone numbers or e-mail addresses provided by that e-mail service. For free email accounts, there is usually no customer service. Your options are generally limited to self-service recovery forms, knowledge base articles, and official discussion forums where service representatives may (or may not) participate. For paid accounts, there are typically additional customer service options that are more likely to exist able to assist.

Important: If you cannot recover admission to your account, it is now someone else'southward account. I can't stress this enough. It is now the hacker'southward account. Unless you've backed it up, everything in it is gone forever, and you can skip to Step 5. Y'all'll demand to prepare up a new business relationship from scratch and start over.

two. Modify your password

One time yous regain access to your business relationship (or if you lot never lost it), immediately change your password.

Every bit always, make certain it'southward a skilful countersign: easy to retrieve, difficult to judge, and long. In fact, the longer the better, just make sure your new password is at least 12 characters, and ideally 16 or more (if the service supports information technology).

But don't terminate in that location.

See Changing your password is not plenty.

3. Change or confirm your recovery information

While a hacker has access to your account, they might leave your countersign lonely then y'all won't discover the hack for a while longer.

But whether they change your password or non, they may alter all of the recovery data.

The reason is uncomplicated: if you exercise change your password, the hacker tin follow the "I forgot my countersign" steps and they can reset the password out from underneath yous, using the recovery information they set.

Thus, you need to check all of it — and change much of it — right away.

• Modify the answers to your hush-hush questions if your account uses them. They don't have to match the questions (yous might say your female parent'southward maiden name is "Microsoft", for case); all that matters is that the answers you give during a future account recovery match the answers you fix today.
• Check the alternate electronic mail accost(es) associated with your account, and remove any yous don't recognize. The hacker could have added his or her ain. Make sure you take alternate email addresses configured, and that they are accounts that belong to y'all that you can access. I really can't emphasize that terminal point enough: the number of accounts that are lost because the recovery email address could no longer be accessed is astonishing.
• Cheque any telephone numbers associated with the account. The hacker could have set their ain. Remove any you lot don't recognize. Brand sure that if you do provide a phone number, information technology's yours and no i else'due south, and you take access to it. As with alternate email addresses, I really can't emphasize the last indicate enough: the number of accounts that are lost because the recovery mobile number could no longer be accessed is scary.

These are the major items, but many services use additional data for account recovery. Take the time now to research that information. If it's something a hacker could change, change it to something appropriate for you.

Overlooking data used for account recovery allows the hacker to hands hack back in. Make sure yous take the time to carefully cheque and reset all as advisable.

Information technology's a unproblematic trap too many people fall into causing them to lose their email account forever. Check out A Ane-step Way to Lose Your Account … Forever.

4. Check "out of function" letters, respond-to, forwards, and signatures

If your email service provides an out-of-office or vacation-autoresponder feature, or some kind of automatic signature that appears at the bottom of every email you send, it's possible people already know you're hacked.

Hackers often ready an auto-responder in a hacked business relationship to automatically reply with their spam. Each time someone emails you, they become this fake message in render, ofttimes written then information technology sounds similar you sent it.

If your business relationship includes the ability to set up a unlike "Reply-To:" email address, make sure that hasn't been ready. Hackers can set this and then individuals who think they're replying to y'all stop up replying to the hacker instead.

Make sure your email is not being automatically forwarded to another e-mail address. If it'south bachelor, hackers oftentimes prepare this option to receive copies of every electronic mail you lot get. They tin can use this to suspension into your account once again, even after you recover it.

Check whatsoever signature feature the service supports. Hackers often ready a signature so that every electronic mail you send includes whatever they're promoting, including a link to a malicious web site.

v. Check related accounts

This is perhaps the scariest and most time-consuming aspect of business relationship recovery. The risks are high, so agreement this is important.

While the hacker has access to your account, they have access to your email, including past and current emails equally well as what arrives in the time to come.

Let'southward say the hacker sees you have a notification electronic mail from your Facebook account. The hacker at present knows yous have a Facebook business relationship, and the email address you use for it. The hacker can go to Facebook, enter your e-mail address, and request a password reset.

A password reset sent to your email account … which the hacker has access to.

Equally a effect, the hacker can now hack your Facebook account by virtue of having hacked your e-mail account.

In fact, the hacker tin now proceeds access to whatsoever account associated with the hacked e-mail business relationship.

Like your bank. Or PayPal.

Allow me say that again: considering the hacker has access to your electronic mail account, he or she can asking a password reset be sent to it from any other account for which you lot employ this email address. In doing and then, the hacker can hack and gain admission to those accounts.

What you need to do: check your other accounts for password resets you did non initiate and whatever other suspicious activity.

If there's whatever uncertainty, consider changing the passwords on all those accounts besides. (There'south a very stiff statement for checking or changing the recovery data for these accounts, just every bit you checked on your e-mail account, for however reasons.)

6. Allow your contacts know

Some disagree with me, but I recommend letting your contacts know your account was hacked, either from the business relationship once yous've recovered it, or from your new email business relationship.

Inform all the contacts in the online account'due south address volume, because that'southward the address book the hacker had access to.

I believe it's important to notify your contacts and then they know not to pay attention to email sent while the account was hacked. Occasionally, hackers try to impersonate you to extort money from your contacts. The sooner y'all permit them know the account was hacked, the sooner they'll know that whatsoever such request — or fifty-fifty the more traditional spam that might take come from your business relationship — is bogus.

7. Get-go backing up

A common reaction to my recommendation that you let your contacts know is: "Simply my contacts are gone! The hacker erased them all, and all of my email as well!"

Yes. That happens.

It's frequently function of a hacker not wanting to leave a trail; they delete everything they've done, along with everything yous have. Or had.

If yous're similar most people, yous've not been backing upward your online e-mail. All I can suggest at this point is to run into if your email service will restore it for y'all. In general, they will non. Considering the deletion was not their doing, but rather the doing of someone logged into the business relationship, they may claim information technology's your responsibility.

Hard as it is to hear, they're admittedly correct.

Get-go backing up your email now. Start bankroll up your contacts now.

For electronic mail, that tin be annihilation from setting up a PC to periodically download the email, to setting upward an automatic frontwards of all incoming email to a dissimilar account, if your provider supports that. For contacts, it could be setting up a remote contact utility (relatively rare, I'thou afraid) to mirror your contacts on your PC, or periodically exporting your contacts and downloading them, which is what I exercise.

8. Learn from the experience

Aside from "y'all should accept been backing up," one of the most important lessons to larn from this experience is to consider all the ways your account could take been hacked, and take appropriate steps to protect yourself from a echo occurrence.

• Employ strong passwords that tin can't be guessed, and don't share them withanyone.
• Don't autumn for email phishing attempts. If they ask for your password, they are bogus.
• Don't click on links in e-mail you lot are non 100% certain of. Many phishing attempts lead you lot to bogus sites asking you to log in, and and so steal your countersign when you endeavor.
• If you're using WiFi hotspots, learn to use them safely.
• Keep the operating arrangement and other software on your machine up to date, and run up-to-date security software.
• Larn to use the cyberspace safely.
• Consider multi-cistron authentication. More and more services support this.

If you are fortunate enough to be able to identify exactly how your password was compromised (it's not mutual), then admittedly take measures and so it never happens once more.

ix. If you're not sure, go help

If the steps in a higher place seem too daunting or confusing, then get assistance. Find someone who can help y'all become out of the state of affairs by working through the steps above.

While you're at it, find someone who can help you gear up a more than secure organisation for your electronic mail and propose you on the steps you need to take to prevent this from happening again.

And and then follow those steps.

The reality is that you and I are responsible for our own security. That means taking the time to learn how to set things upwards securely so doing and so.

Yes, boosted security can be seen as an inconvenience. In my opinion, dealing with a hacked email business relationship is significantly more than inconvenient, and occasionally downright dangerous. It'southward worth the trouble to do things right.

If that'due south yet too much … well … expect your business relationship to become hacked again.

10. Share this article

As I said, email account theft is rampant.

Share this article with friends and family. Statistically, i of you will soon run into someone whose business relationship has been hacked and will need this information.

Addendum: Is it my calculator or not?

When faced with this situation, many people worry that malware on their computer is responsible.

As information technology turns out, that's rarely the example.

In the vast majority of these situations, your computer was never involved.

The problem is not on your computer. The problem is simply that someone else figured out your countersign and logged into your account. They could be on the other side of the planet, far away from you and your computer (and oft they are).

Yes, information technology's possible that a keylogger was used to capture your password. Aye, it's possible that your PC was used improperly at an open WiFi hotspot. So, yeah, absolutely, browse it for malware and employ it safely, but don't recall for a moment that in one case y'all're malware gratis, yous've resolved the problem. You take not.

You need to follow the steps outlined hither to regain access to your account and protect it from farther compromise.

You'll use your computer, only your estimator is not the trouble.

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As I update this article periodically over the years, the list has grown from 7 to 10 items. Don't permit that stop you from taking all the steps to recover and keep your business relationship secure.

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Source: https://askleo.com/email-hacked/

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