How to Fix and Prevent a Hacked Email Account

What could be more violating and alarming than learning that your email account has been hacked? And you will never know about it until a friend or relative informs you, which by that time your hacked account has already sent dozens of email to all your contacts about a video or attachment that they really should click and see. We all know the feeling -- it's awkward, embarassing, and frightening, but what can you do about it?

If ever you got the shortest straw and fell as victim of email hacking, check out the guidelines below to learn what you should do next and how to protect yours email account from getting hacked again.

Get into your email account

First thing you need to do is to assess the damage. Hackers don't normally change their victim's email password. Most of the time, they would simply log in, send out a mass email to your contacts, and then proceeds to their next victim. Try logging in to your email account, now if in case you're unable to log back in using your password, you may opt to use the Forgot your password? link at the sign-in screen to reset your password and be able to get back into your account. You may either need to answer some security questions or recover it using an alternate email address.

You may also want to check both your inbox and trash folders for any password reset emails from other services or accounts linked to your email address that you haven't made. There is a possibility that the hacker may have attempted to change your password on other sites, using access to your email to perform password change.

Avoid using easy passwords

This would probably be the best time to change your password, whether or not the hacker changed your password. For a guide on how to create hard-to-crack passwords, click here. You may also want to consider using a password manager such as LastPass and DashLane, which stores your passwords and auto-generates complex and strong passwords, making it lesss vulnerable to hacking.

When creating a password manually, make it long and strong, using multiple cases, numbers, and special characters. Also, avoid using real words. It's better to change it once you're able to get back in to your account before it's too late. It is also important to change your password for your other accounts with other services such as Facebook, Twitter, PayPal, or your Internet banking account that may have the same password.

Re-enter your password on other devices

Once you have set a new password for your email account, make sure to re-enter this on your other mobile devices to make sure that you will still receive your emails normally.

Check for spam

Many hackers compromise email accounts so that they can attack your contacts. They use your email address to send out spam or phishing emails to trick them into thinking that you need help, buy something, or give out your personal information. Though it can be difficult to determine if your email account is being abused this way, it will help you identify if someone in your contacts is being targeted by making a quick check on your sent mail or inbox folders.

If you do see someone contacted by the hacker, inform them immediately thru other means of communication that you did not send them the email, if possible.

Check your settings

Concerning your email account settings, make a thorough check on your settings to make sure that the hacker did not change anything that will give them easy access to your account in the future. For example, check if your secondary (recovery) email is still accurate.

Another thing you might want to check is make sure that the hacker did not set any forwarding rules, because if there is, emails that you will receive will be sent to them as well.

Let your friends and other contacts know about the incident

Using a different email address or other forms of communication, immediately warn your contacts not to open anything from your hacked email address. Suggest them to use the most up-to-date firewall and antivirus protection available. Tell friends who have received emails from you to ignore or delete the email, and then run a scan using their antivirus software and make sure that all their security patches are updated.

Protect yourself

Here are some things you can do to minimize the risk of having your email account or other services hacked:

• The longer the password, the better. The more characters your password have, the longer it will take for the hacker to break it, which may give them second thoughts of pursuing your account.

• Use a mixture of numbers, lowercase, and uppercase letters and special characters because it increases the complexity of your password and its strength.

• Avoid using words that can be found in the dictionary as your password. Using a real word as your password has a great chance of being broken by cybercriminals.

• Never use a password twice.

Aside from having a stronger and longer password, a different type of security mechanism called two-factor authentication is becoming largely available. This serves another form of identification aside from your usual username and password, which normally consists of a code generated by a key fob or a smartphone app, that has to be put in during your login time and changes every minutes or so.

This means you keep something that the hacker cannot get to, thus securing your account with another layer of protection. Banks have already been using two-factor authentication, some giving out card readers that force you to enter your PIN to generate a code to input into your Internet banking account. Today, most email providers and other online services offer two-factor or two-step authentication for free. This extra layer of security is definitely worth activating on your account(s) if it is available.