How To Know If Your Email Has Been Hacked – And What To Do

Email accounts are a particularly popular target for hackers. Emails often contain a treasure trove of valuable data, up to and including banking information. Getting hold of this data can enable fraudsters to apply for credit, open new bank accounts or carry out fraudulent transaction.

They may sell your data on to the highest bidder; sometimes, they'll even use personal data for the purposes of espionage, harassment or blackmail. We’ll look at how to tell whether your email has been hacked, what steps you should take next, and how you can keep your account safe from hacking attacks in future. How To Know If Your Email Has Been Hacked Hackers have a number of ways of getting into your email account.



The most common is phishing — getting the victim to click on a fraudulent link. Users can also be vulnerable when using a public or shared device, or if they've used an easily guessable password or reused one from another hacked site. There are a number of signs that your email may have been hacked, some more obvious than others.

The clearest indication is being unable to log in, but others include unexpected or missing emails — which you may only find out about from your contacts — unexpected changes to your password or account settings or alerts from your email provider itself. There are a number of ways to check whether your email has been hacked. First, running an antivirus program should show whether there's any suspicious software lurking.

This is probably the most definitive way of checking. In addition, many security firms such as Avast , Norton and specialist site Have I Been Pwned , have online services to tell you whether your password's out there on the dark web. Hacking Sign Example 1: Can't Log In Most people find out that their email has been hacked when they discover that they can't log in using their current password or that their account settings have changed.

You may also spot unfamiliar devices or locations listed in your email account's activity log. Hacking Sign Example 2: Unfamiliar Sent Items Your contacts may start getting strange emails apparently from you, perhaps asking them to click on a link or send money. Checking your Sent folder may reveal the sending of mass emails to all your contacts.

Meanwhile, other, genuine, emails may go missing as the hacker takes control. Hacking Sign Example 3: You Receive An Alert Depending on your provider and how your account has been set up, you may discover that your email has been subject to a hacking attempt when you receive an alert from your email provider itself. This may warn you that your account settings have been changed, or that someone logged into your account from a device you don’t recognize or a location you’re not at.

The alert will ask for confirmation that it was you, and allow you to secure your account. Hacking Sign Example 4: Password Reset Emails You may start receiving emails asking you to reset your password for other sites — shopping sites, financial institutions and the like. This is a sign that criminals have hacked your email and are now trying to gain access to your other accounts and services and discover and exploit your banking information.

What Should You Do If Your Email Is Hacked? If you suspect that your email account has been hacked, you'll have a fair bit of work ahead - and you'll need to act pretty fast. The first priority, of course, is to regain control of the account. As soon as you've done that, you should make sure that the recovery information is correct, and that the hacker hasn't added their own recovery email address or phone number.

You'll also need to alert your contacts, check whether other accounts such as Facebook or — heaven forbid — banking have been accessed, and check your credit report to make sure that the criminals haven't been helping themselves to your cash. You should also then take steps to make sure that your account stays secure in future. Step 1: Run A Virus Scan It's highly likely that the attackers gained access to your account by using malware.

So if you still have access to the account, the first thing to do is to run a virus scan — as comprehensive a scan as possible. This will check for spyware, Trojans, keyloggers and other types of malware, and remove them — do this for all devices that use the email account, including computers, smartphones, and tablets. At the same time, you should make sure your browsers and apps are up-to-date, and that you've installed any security updates.

It's also a good idea to remove any third-party extensions or apps that you no longer need or use. Step 2: Change Your Password Once you're confident that your devices are clean of malware, you should change your password to something completely new and unlike anything you've used before. Make sure that the new password is as strong and unique as possible — using upper-case and lower-case letters, numbers and special characters.

Avoid anything guessable, such as birthdates or the names of children or pets — well as “tweaked” versions of any of these. If you're worried you won't be able to remember your new password, you could consider storing it — and all your other passwords — securely in a password manager. And you should also change your security questions — make sure there's nothing that could be guessed by looking at, for example, your social media posts.

Step 3: Confirm Your Other Accounts Haven't Been Impacted Email credentials are often used for other accounts and apps, such as social media, subscription services and banking — and these accounts are often the target of the hackers. It's a bit time-consuming, but it's vital to go through any other accounts and check that they're all in the clear, changing passwords to be on the safe side and prevent them from getting control. It goes without saying that all these passwords should be strong and unique.

If you think any other accounts have also been affected, you should try resetting the password and, failing that, contacting customer services. Step 4: Alert Your Contacts If attackers have had control of your email account, they're highly likely to try and target your contacts with malware or scams too — and you should aim to head this off if possible. You can send a generic email to all your contacts, explaining what's happened and warning them not to open any suspicious links that come from your email address or respond to any pleas for financial help.

And if there's any chance that the attackers may have breached your social media accounts too, you'll need to issue the same warnings there too. You could also suggest that they tighten up their own privacy settings to be on the safe side. Step 5: Check Your Credit Report The holy grail for anyone hacking your email account is to get access to your cash.

Check your accounts, and contact your bank immediately if you notice any suspicious activity. And be eagle-eyed when you do this: it's not unusual for hackers to start off with very small transactions on your account, just to check out the lie of the land. You should also check your credit rating, and ask credit reporting agencies to monitor your accounts for a few months after you've been hacked, just to make sure problems don't emerge further down the line.

How Can You Recover Your Email Account? Whether you've still got access to your account or not, it's a good idea to contact your email service provider — it could help the company track down the hackers and help protect its customers in future. If you have lost access to your account, though, this is something you'll definitely need to do. You'll need to ask for a password reset, so make sure you have the answers to any security questions.

Many email companies now have a dedicated recovery page to let you do this online — you can find Google's Gmail service here , Microsoft Outlook's here , and Yahoo's here . If you have any problems, there are agents available for live chats via these pages too. How Can You Secure Your Email Account From Hackers? Once you've regained control of your email account, you'll want to do everything you can to make sure that it doesn't get hacked again — and that means developing good security habits.

Change your password regularly, always to something unique and strong. Avoid clicking links in emails unless you're absolutely certain they're legitimate, turn on spam filters, and be cautious about accessing email through public wifi. A VPN should give more security.

You should also keep all your software updated by enabling automatic updates, which often include fixes for known vulnerabilities. And finally, make sure you're using a good anti-virus package, and enable multi-factor verification, for example where you're sent an authentication code, if it's available. Bottom Line Discovering that your email has been hacked can be a real shock, and may be time-consuming to sort out.

But if you keep a cool head and follow all the right steps, you should be able to get your account back and protect yourself from problems in future..