What Are the Five Steps I should follow if My Email Account Gets Hacked?

Emails that have been hacked by cyber criminals are a treasure for the access of your for personal data to all your different accounts and platforms. This is because, it needs to consider that starting from your social media sites, applications, online banking to the federal taxes, everything is linked to your emails and that the recovery from an email hack is quite sensitive and difficult. You’ll have to act fast and carefully if you want to minimize the damage to your identity, finances, and protect those around you.

The nature of your email account with its continuous growth results in making your account a huge target for the cyber criminals and the online hackers. If you become a victim of a hacker and if your email account gets hacked, do not panic. Instead, follow the five useful solutions that are provided below for the recovery of your hacked email threats:

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1. Run an Antivirus Program Software

As seen by the reports for the hacked email threats, the first and foremost thing one needs to do if your account is hacked is to immediately run an antivirus scan that is end to end encrypted.

If you see the option of "quick scan" in the setting, you should skip the option. And then go for a deep scan for identifying and eliminating all the forms of malware (that includes the spyware, Trojan horse, malware) keyloggers that keeps a track of your keystrokes after the hack is identified and the unwanted applications potentially.

Hackers not only just want to have access to your account so that they send your friends unusual texts messages, but they are also looking for ways so that they can scam you with money or make you face various credit card frauds. For example, hackers that target a business that regularly is sending funds through the wire transfer. Once an email account is hacked, they will get the access and permission to send their unauthorized transfers from that account.

According to the Internet Crime Complaint Center of FBI, the businesses found a huge loss of million and more than that in the last couple of years, in spite of having a network protection in their place and also good end IT staff on duty.

When it is about your email account, the earlier you use an antivirus scan, the better it is for you. It's important that you make sure to clean before you change any information to eliminate the cycle of restarting.

2. Change the Passwords

Once your system is free from any virus such as malware, it is now time that you change your password. If you lose access of your account, you may have to directly contact with the email provider, then prove about your identity is and then ask for a reset of your password.

Use a new password that has been different markedly from the previous one and make sure you do not use previous alphabets or characters or strings of repeated numbers. Do not use passwords that are quite obvious and is related to your personal information such as your name, birthday, or other personal details. This makes it easy for the hackers to easily find your information and use it in their first attempts for accessing your account.

Your password must be unique and different for all your accounts, it also must be complex which means, you should use a mix of letters and numbers, and use special characters. Also, it should be of at least 15 characters in length. 

 

3. Contact with Different Online Services

Change the passwords with your other online accounts that are critical too. Accounts that require payments say Amazon, Prime Video, Netflix, credit and debit card companies, Google Pay, etc, and even the local library must be reset. Make sure to update each of these account's passwords if you want to prevent the hackers from getting into these accounts.

It is important for you to keep these accounts secure too. Secondary services are of even more value as they target in these security breaches. For example, your bank account can be broken in if the criminal found the information, they needed for resetting your password.

Again, make sure to use a difficult and unique password for every app and account. 

4. Make People Informed about this

When you are thinking about what to do if your email is hacked, you should know that you will have to protect your contact list at priority. It is a good idea if you tell your friends, family, and relatives who are in your contact about the information that your account has been hacked.

During this period, when the hackers get control of your account, they can send hundreds of emails to everyone in your contact list, and this mail is affected by malware. This type of phishing attack finds its new set of victims quite easily through your account.

You must inform your friend's lists on other apps as well. If they are warned, they can take steps to protect their own devices.

5. Change the Already Set Security Questions

While your password is the first thing to be attacked, the next thing that the hackers can break into is your account after they take a chance at answering your security questions.

If they use incorrect answers to security questions, it reduces the hacker's chance of getting in. posts or other public info. As per a recent Google research report, it can be seen that a lot of users are tending to select the same answer and security questions. For example, the most common question is "What is your favourite food?" and around 22% of the users, answer it as "Pizza" if they are in America, or "biryani" if they are in India.

 

These five steps are quite effective to help you get away with the hacked email threats. 

 

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