What to do if your email account is hacked? Follow these steps to get your email back and prevent hackers from accessing your account again. With our tips, you will never have to send the “Sorry everyone, my account was hacked” email again.
Table of Contents
Regain access to your email account
Step one is of course regaining access to your account. There are plenty of scenarios where the hackers only log in, send a mass email to all your contacts and then move on to the next victim. Unfortunately, other hackers will also change your password to prevent you from accessing the account.
To regain access to your account when hackers have changed your password, simply click on the “forgot password” link that you can find below the login screen. You will then have to answer your security questions or use a backup email address to retrieve your password.
Set a difficult password
There are still many people who use passwords that are too easy. If your account has been hacked, it’s time to start using a new password anyway, so choose one that is difficult to crack.
No idea what to look out for? At howsecureismypassword.net you can check how long an average desktop PC will take to guess your password. If you find it difficult to remember all these complicated passwords, you can use a password manager like LastPass. There you can keep all your difficult passwords for different sites and you can see them by entering a master password. So you only have to remember one password overall.
Re-enter your password on other devices
This is necessary to ensure that you continue receiving emails on your phone. Don’t forget to enter your new password on all your other phones, computers and tablets.
Check your settings
To prevent the hacker from changing your password again because the recovery email address has been changed, you should check your settings. There you can see if you still have the correct email address set for recovery. Also, check whether the hacker has adjusted any other forwarding settings to prevent him or her from receiving emails meant for you.
Log out of other active sessions
Before continuing, it is useful to check if there are any other active sessions. If you’ve changed your password this shouldn’t be a problem, but just to be safe, it’s a good idea to end these sessions.
If you have a Gmail account, you can find this option under Details, in the lower right corner of your inbox, right under “last account activity”. If you see suspicious links here, you can use the link next to it to log them out.
Notify your friends
Hackers often use hacked accounts to send malicious software to contacts. That is why it is so important to inform your friends and family that if they receiveв a suspicious email from you, they must delete it.
Add an extra safety factor
If your email has been hacked, it’s safe to assume you haven’t been using two-step verification. This is one of the safest measures against hackers. Once you have set this up, you will need to go an extra step if you want to log into your account. After you enter your password, a code will be sent to your phone. You then have to enter it on the second screen. It makes logging in a bit more difficult, but don’t worry: you only have to do this once on private computers. This way, a hacker can only gain access if they also have control over your phone even with the correct password.
Check other sites
This is why tech and security specialists are always insisting on using each password only once. Because if you have used your email password for multiple online accounts (such as Facebook) then it is not that difficult for a hacker to gain access to other online accounts. So if you do indeed use the same password for multiple online services, you should change them quickly.
