Email, most of us use it every day without even giving it a second thought. It is a service, a method of communication that we tend to take for granted. As a result, you may not fully grasp how much panic sets in if your email is hacked and taken over by someone, until it happens to you. Past the panic, there is the extreme inconvenience you have to go through to make everything right again. This is exactly what happened to me this morning.  I am an avid user of Google’s services and it was my Gmail account that was hacked, so not only was I locked out of my email, but from all the other services as well.

Upon the realization that I could no longer login to my account, I immediately tried to reset my password.  The hacker was smart and changed the alternate email address to their email address so the request was sent to them instead of to me.  After that unsuccessful attempt, I then noticed that Google ® had another option of “My account has been compromised”.  This took me their account recovery from.

The account recovery from asked for various pieces of information about my account.  Like who are my five most frequently emailed contacts, when I created the account, what products do I use, when was my last successful login, etc.  I filled out the form and I expected to wait hours to days to get access back, but surprisingly I received and email within minutes to the contact email address I provided.

I was given a link to change my password and I was finally able to get in, but the fun doesn’t stop there.  Here are some things to check and update when your email is compromised no matter what provider you use:

1. Many email providers ask for an alternate email, so double check that
   wasn’t changed.  If it was, change it back to one of your alternate
   emails.
2. Check that your “reply-to” or from address was not changed.  Again if
   it was changed change it to the address that you want it to be (most
   people use the email address of the account they are using).
3. Check that your email is not being forwarded to the hacker’s email
   address. This can often be found somewhere within your “Settings” or
   Options menus.
4. Once you have performed the above three steps, I suggest changing your
   password one more time.  This is in case they received an email about
   changing your password.
5. It’s very important to change the passwords on all of your accounts
   that you use online that use the same password as the compromised email
   account and for any account that uses that email address.  

Things like this happen to everyone and not just on email accounts.  That’s why it is important to use passwords that are not easy to figure out.  I have to somewhat blame myself for this hack Because had I been using a more secure password, it could have been prevented.  I have now updated all of my passwords online to more secure ones and hopefully I can help to keep things like this from happening to me on the future.