What to Do If Your Gmail Account Gets Hacked?
- The very first thing you should do if your Gmail account is hacked is check to see if you can still log into it.
- Because this may seem like a wasted step, but we don’t know how many hackers neglect to change the original password right away.
- If we can log in, immediately change your password and check our secondary email/secret question/mobile phone number have not been changed.
After that follow the procedure:
- Go to Settings in GMAIL –> Accounts and Imports –> Google Account Settings. From there, look under personal settings.
- After that we can change our password, as well as our password recovery options. We should change everything.
Unable to log in Gmail?
- Here is the another way to resolve this issue by resetting our password, either through the secondary email address, mobile phone number, or your secret question.
- More over fast thinking and fast acting is our best bet for getting through this situation unharmed.
- And if you have no alert for the problem until it was already too late.
- Suppose if the hacker has already changed our secondary address and/or your secret question means, we will have to start dealing with Google directly and prepare to fill out a form by using the following reference URL: https://www.google.com/accounts/recovery
If you can’t remember your secret question answer, or it has been changed, go to this page?
Go to the following reference URL
https://www.google.com/support/accounts/bin/request.py?hl=en&contact_type=acc_reco&ara=2&ctx=acc_reco&rd=1
- And tic the box that says “No” indicating that we were unable to regain access to our account using the above methods.
- The form is relatively short and straightforward and will allow Google to establish that we are the correct and true owner of the account, and also pinpoint the exact time the account was taken over.
- Unfortunately, this is the extent of our legitimate options. It’s now a waiting game, which is often the most frustrating part of identity theft.
- If you don’t already have a secondary email address, now is probably a good time to set one up.
- If your Gmail password was the same as any of our others (which is a bad idea) – online banking, Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, etc. – you must change all those passwords, as well as set them up with our new email address while Google is working on the old one.
- And send an email to friends/family/business contacts associated with our Gmail address and warn them that our account was hacked and that they should ignore suspicions communications from it until further notice.
- Post a similar message to any social networking sites you belong to.
- Once the situation is resolved, and we are once again in possession of your account, repeat the steps above and log into your security settings.
- Check absolutely everything – including what name and address your mail is sent as. A brief overview of what you should be checking on:
Account Security:
- Settings –> Accounts and Import –> Google Account Settings –> Change Password [change your password]
- Settings –> Accounts and Import –> Google Account Settings –> Change Password Recovery Options [verify every security measure, then change them]
Spam:
- Settings –> General -> Signature [double check nothing has changed]
- Settings –> General -> Vacation Responder [be sure it hasn't been turned on]
Hijacking:
- Settings –> Accounts and Import –> Send Mail As [make sure this is your correct address]
- Settings –> Filters [you don't want filters that delete mail]
- Settings –> Forwarding and POP/IMAP –> Forwarding [disabled or whatever address you assigned]
- Settings –> Forwarding and POP/IMAP –> POP Download [disabled]
- Settings –> Forwarding and POP/IMAP –> IMAP Access [disabled]
Applies to:
Related Tags:
- what to do if your facebook account gets hacked
- what to do if email account gets hacked
- what to do if your gmail has been hacked
- my gmail account was hacked and password changed
- my gmail has been hacked and password changed
- what should i do if my gmail account was hacked?
- what to do when your email gets hacked
- securing your google account after a possible hack
