If you are one of the unfortunate millions of people every year whose email has been compromised, here is a quick guide of what to do.
Change your passwords immediately
I know its super annoying, but its super important that you change all of your passwords. It is something that should be done periodically anyway, usually every few months. If you have already been hacked, that means the bad guys have already found there way into your computer, and so may be trying to access all of your other accounts.
Many people use the same password or similar password for all of their accounts, and the bad guys know this also, so all it takes is for them to attack one website with poor security to gain your password, and then they will attempt to login to various financial institutions with your password.
If you think you are being clever by using a scheme to create slightly different passwords, don’t be too confident, all it takes is for a hacker to view a couple of your passwords to see the pattern, remember these guys are computer and algorithm experts, decoding your clever scheme is surprisingly easy!
Check your email rules and filters. Especially the automated replies and forwarding rules.
The most common email hack involves sending emails to people you know asking them for money or for them to purchase something. Since its coming from you, some people may be tempted to help you out. Especially if the message involves you in some sort of trouble or emergency situation.
I also can’t count the number of weird emails I get from people I know that I know are hacked emails. It happens all the time!
Sometimes you won’t be able to reply to that person via email, one handy alternative is to contact that person via Facebook or any other phone app like WhatsApp or Viber, just to confirm their request and identity.
So check your email rules and filters pronto!
Go through your emails to see if there is any sensitive information.
Your email is not safe! By that I mean its never 100% secure, so you shouldn’t ever send financial information like bank account numbers, passwords, social security number, etc… over email. That said, most of us has done so at some point. So you need to go through your email to erase that stuff, if you’ve been hacked it’s something you need to do immediately to prevent them attacking your financial accounts or other important accounts.
Another reason why you should never send important info over email, even if you clean your account, the person you sent it to may never clean theirs! So you have then lost control of your own personal data and it may sit in their inbox until someone eventually comes along and steals it!
Get a good antivirus software program
If you’ve been hacked, its possible that you have malware on your computer. Because it’s a possibility you need to run some type of antivirus software to try and remove it.
Will an antivirus software protect you 100%, No! But most estimates antivirus software only catches about 50-75% of malware, but that is a lot better than nothing! I know people who reason, that since it is not 100% effective, it is useless, but that is simply not true. If the software allows you to miss just one virus, then it was worth the money in terms of potential money stolen, and time and aggravation spared.
Stick with a well-known virus provider like MacAfee, Norton, Avast, or Kaspersky. A lot of people searching for “free anti-virus software” can end up installing a virus!
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