What To Do If Email Account Gets Hacked ?
Cybercriminals hacked emails are a gold mine for personal data and access to all of your accounts. Given that we associate everything from online banking to federal taxes with our emails, recovery from a breach is extremely time-dependent.
You will have to act quickly and carefully if you want to minimize damage to your personality, finances and protect those around you.
You are probably asking, “My email is hacked, how can I fix this?” If you are a little lucky, you may not be entirely sure that you have been hacked. Even if you ask, “How can I know if someone has hacked my email account?” Kaspersky can help you.
According to Radicati’s 2019 Email Statistics Report, the number of email users worldwide will reach nearly 4.3 billion by 2023. What’s more, the report predicts that users will send and receive 347 billion messages together per day, up from an average of 293 billion in 2019.
The ubiquity of email, coupled with its constant growth, makes your accounts an attractive target for hackers. If you’ve been the victim of a hacked email account, here’s what you need to do to fix the situation.
Run Your Antivirus
As noted in the FTC’s Hacked Email Guidelines, the first thing you should do if your account gets hacked is to run an end-to-end antivirus scan.
Skip the “quick scan” setting in favor of deep scanning to detect and eliminate not only all forms of malware (including Trojans, spyware, and keyloggers that can track keystrokes even after a compromise is detected), but also potentially unwanted applications.
Hackers don’t just want to gain access to your account to send awkward messages to your friends – they are looking for ways to trick you out of money or commit credit card fraud.
For example, hackers target companies that regularly send funds by bank transfer. Once their email account is hacked, they can send their unauthorized transfers.
According to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaints Center, the companies have incurred apparent losses of more than $ 747 million in the past two years, despite having network defenses and IT staff in place.
As far as your email accounts are concerned, the sooner you run your antivirus scan, the better. Before changing any other sensitive information, it is important to make sure you are clean to avoid restarting the cycle.
Change Your Password
Once your computer is free of malware, it’s time to change your password. If you’ve lost access to your account, you may need to contact your email provider directly, prove who you are, and ask them to reset your password.
Choose a new password that is noticeably different from the old one, and make sure it does not contain strings of duplicate characters or numbers. Stay away from passwords that are clearly associated with your name, birthday, or similar personal information. Hackers can easily find this information and often use it in their first brute-force attempts to gain access to your account.
Your password must be unique for each account, complex (i.e. consisting of letters, numbers, and special characters), and at least 15 characters long. If you need help creating new passwords or managing all-new complex ones, use a secure password manager to keep them safe.
Contact Other Online Services
Changing passwords with other internet accounts is also critical. Payment accounts like Amazon, Netflix, credit card companies, and even your local library need to be reset. Be sure to update each of your passwords to prevent hackers from breaking those accounts too.
Keeping these other accounts secure is very important. Secondary services are ultimately much more valuable targets in these security breaches. For example, your bank account could easily become the next hack if a scammer finds the information they need to reset your password.
Again, be sure to use a unique password for each site. The risk of subsequent hacks increases if you use the same password for multiple sites.
Simplified login via email or social media accounts should be avoided to further mitigate this risk. However, even different passwords may not be enough if you have emails in your account leading directly to associated online providers.
Notify People You Know
When considering what to do if your email is compromised, remember that you will also need to protect your contact list. It’s a good idea to let your friends, family, and anyone else on your email contact list know that you have been hacked.
During the period when attackers controlled your account, they could send dozens or even hundreds of emails containing malware to everyone you know. This type of phishing attack, in turn, gives them access to a new set of victims.
You must also notify your friend lists on other platforms. Email can be just one of the ways that attackers can lure your contacts. If they hack your social media or messaging apps, fraudulent messages can be sent from each of them.
Alerting your contacts allows them to take action to make sure their own devices are clean and not damaged.
Report The Hack
If you haven’t already, contact your email service provider and report the hack. This is important even if the hacked email did not result in the loss of access.
A breach report helps ISPs track down fraudulent behavior. By reporting a breach, you protect yourself and others from future threats by helping your ISP improve their security.
In addition, your email provider may provide detailed information about the origin or nature of the attack. You may find that the violation is more serious and affects other services you may have.
Create a New Email Account
Sometimes you shouldn’t continue where you left off. Take a moment to remember: has this email been hacked before? Is your ISP not taking action to reduce the amount of spam you receive? It might be time to switch.
Find a service that offers encryption of your emails by default. Data encryption helps to hide your private emails in the event of a breach of the provider’s servers. Hackers cannot unlock this data without the proper security key.
Highly rated customer service is another feature worth looking for if you’re looking for a new email provider. If a problem arises, they should work with you without any problem to resolve your situation.
Conclusion
Update your basic antivirus protection to real-time online protection if you haven’t already. Look for a service that proactively blocks new, unknown threats and actively protects your online activities.
Once you know how to fix a hacked email, it becomes much easier to protect yourself. If you ever find that your email has been hacked, follow these 10 steps to take back control and prevent future problems.