If your contacts suddenly report getting weird email from you, hackers have probably gained access
and are using your email account(s) to send spam. They got me about two weeks ago but I was able
to access my account and recover.
Below is what you need to do if it happens to you........ extracted from "Ask Leo" at http://ask-leo.com .
Cheers, Don Blake
------- If you Don't Have Access To Your Account
If you can't login yourself your options are severely limited. Your account has been hacked into, and
the hacker has locked you out. "When this happens people frequently assume that they have a virus.
This is typically NOT the case."
*
Password Recovery - use the "I forgot my password" link on your account's login page to see if
they'll send you a password reset or other means of regaining access to your account. There's a good
chance hackers will have changed all the information that you would use to prove you are the rightful
owner meaning it's likely that this will not work, but it's worth a try.
*
Customer Support - contact the customer support department for the email service that you're using.
That may be phone support, but more often than not for free accounts (where I see this happening most often)
there is no formal email or phone based support. Typically there are just FAQs and occasionally a peer-to-peer
support forum where users can help each other. Unfortunately, this type of problem requires help directly from the service.
If you're able to regain access to your account immediately proceed to the "If You Do Have Access..." steps below.
-------- If You Can't Regain Access To Your Account
Unfortunately, I believe this to be the most common scenario, particularly with the larger free email services.
As I mentioned above hackers will frequently change all the account recovery information associated with your
account and you'll have no way to get it back.
*
Create A New Account - you may already have done this, but you're going to need a new email account. It's up
to you whether you want it to be on the same email service or not. This will be your new email account.
*
Tell Your Contacts - email all your contacts that your email address has been changed, and that the old one
was compromised and is not you. If you lost your contact list as part of all this, do the best you can - if you can't
recover the account you can't get the contact list.
*
Move On - there's little more than can be done. Move on with your life, there's not much point in spending a lot
more effort and energy on this, other than to learn from it so that it doesn't happen again.
-------- If You Have Access To Your Account
If you have or regain access to your account there are several things you need to do immediately:
*
Change Your Password - make it a good one. You know the drill: unique, hard to guess and (probably) hard to
remember, don't use real words, do use a mix of upper and lower case, numbers and if allowed a symbol or two.
*
Change Your Account Recovery Information - I can't over-emphasize how important this is. Change the answers
to your secret questions; choose or make up new questions if you can. Confirm that the alternate email addresses
associated with your account, as well as any phone numbers, are correct and yours. Remove any billing information
like credit cards from the account. Any and all of this could be used by a hacker to regain access to your account almost
immediately.
*
Check For Forwards - if the email service provides the ability to automatically forward your email to another address,
make sure the hacker didn't set one up. This is another way they could quickly regain access to your account.
*
Check the Signature - if the email service provides the ability to automatically add a signature to your email, make
sure the hacker didn't set one up turning every email you send into an ad for something.
*
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