All of a sudden, your clients,friends and family start calling, texting and emailing you asking about the link or email you sent them. You’re thinking, I haven’t sent out anything, what happened?
Well, you may have had your email hacked…
The first thing you need to do is immediately change your password. Also change your other account passwords. If you can’t get in, try the “forgot my password” or other account recovery options provided by the service. The email service will send a reset code or password to your phone or alternate email. If the hacker has changed these, the only other option is to contact customer service by email of telephone. If you don’t have access to the alternate email or phone number, you may be out of luck.
If a free email service is being used, there is usually no customer service.
If none of these methods worked, that account is no longer yours, and a new one needs to be set up.Hopefully, you’ve backed up your email and contacts on a regular basis, so everything has not been lost.
Notify your banking and all other online accounts to prevent identity fraud. If you have a service such as Idshield or LifeLock, alert them. If a password manager such as LastPass, Dashlane, Roboform is in use, they all have options to generate secure passwords. As long as you can remember one secure, complex, password to protect the others, the passwords can be changed relatively quickly.
If you can change the password, change it to something long, and easy to remember, but hard to guess. A phrase such as” I live on a street with 45 houses” could be reduced to “IliveoaStreetw45Houses!”. According to password cracking services, it takes much longer to break a code like this than one that is short and is personal, such as a pet’s name, or a birthday.
Some hackers actually keep your password the same so the hack can go undiscovered for longer. Change all of the recovery information to make sure it is yours, not the hacker’s. Take the time to put in your cell phone number, and alternate email in the recovery options. Change the recovery questions and answers. It may make sense to use someone else’s email or phone as a recovery method, something the hacker has no access to.
Another thing to consider is, while your email may have been hacked, it is doubtful that your computer has been compromised with malware. It is a good idea to verify that your computer is free from those infections, but it more likely the case that the hacker is nowhere near your computer and has accessed your email through the web. They could be in the same town, but just as easily be on the other side of the world.
Check autoresponders, email signatures and forwards to make sure the hacker hasn’t changed them. Also, check related accounts – banking, Facebook, Medica, etc.
One free way to back up your email is to have a Microsoft live mail account, Gmail, or other email that is used infrequently. Set up your email account to automatically forward a copy of your email to these accounts, or have those services automatically retrieve the emails on a regular basis.
The truth is, we’re each responsible for our own security. Pass this on to family and friends, because sooner or later, it will happen to someone you know. If it’s inconvenient to complete the security steps, imagine the inconvenience, of having to react to an email hack.
All the best,
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