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#Post#: 215--------------------------------------------------
Hacked email accounts AGAIN
By: Intelinside Date: May 23, 2013, 6:14 am
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Yet again today I see on one of the local forums “my Hotmail
account has been blocked” or more usually “my email account has
been hacked” then comes the question “What can I do?”
Well the easiest answer to give at this point is “it’s a bit
late asking now; if you had prepared for it yesterday you would
not be asking for help now”.
So how do you prepare for, or install a bit of insurance against
this. Firstly has your account been hacked, “NO” I hear you say,
its working fine. Are you sure? Sometimes the hacker does not
change the password, they just use the account for sending SPAM,
but they change the recovery information so if something
untoward happens with the account they are informed and not you.
The points below highlight specifics but check all settings in
your profile.
No1 go to your email account now and look for “settings” or
“profile” and find out where to change your password, change it
NOW
No2 Most phones have a calendar on them these days; use yours to
set a reminder to change your password again in 3 months.
Remember passwords should be treated like a toothbrush, change
it every 3 months and never let anyone else use it!!!!!!!!
No3 whilst changing your password look for the option to set up
a recovery email address. Chances are that you set one of these
up 10yrs ago when you created the account but can you remember
what it is?, does it still actually exist?.
Change it now to something you can remember, if you don’t have a
secondary email account anywhere, set one up or use the email
address of a trusted family member. Someone you can phone to get
the recovery information that will be sent out if your account
is hacked/blocked.
No4 Look at the option for a security question, did you set one
up? Do you know the answer?.
Most people when setting answers to these questions fall to the
same error. What was your mother’s maiden name “Smith” what was
your first pets name “Rex”. They then go onto one of the
Twitfacefriend sites and post details about their personal life,
you know, my mother was also a Smith maybe we are related, our
dog was named after uncle Rex.
Here’s a tip, pick a word, name, colour, place anything and
always use this as your answer no matter what the question was
(obviously you must set this up first). So when setting up that
account when you come to set the security question Example “what
is your mother’s maiden name” answer Widget.
“In what town were you born” Answer Widget, you get the idea.
You will always remember the answer and it won’t matter what the
question was, nobody is ever going to guess that your favourite
teacher was called Widget. All that matters is that the answers
you give match the answers that you set.
No5 Set up another account, with your same email company or
better still with someone else and then have all your emails
forwarded on to the new account whenever a new email arrives.
This way you will always have copies even if the old account
gets hacked. OK if the hacker changes all your settings you
won’t get anymore emails but at least you have the old ones.
No6 Consider using Microsoft Outlook (the program) or
Thunderbird to act as an email client and store your emails
directly on your computer rather than on some remote server. The
advantage with this is you can keep your contact lists on the
computer and should your email address get hacked there will not
be any contacts for the system to send SPAM to.
No7 Set up some spare email addresses to use for contacting
companies, signing up to newsletters etc when you don’t want to
give out your personal/main email address, even consider using
one of the many disposable email addresses available
mailinator.com for example.
No8 Lastly, and a lot of people won’t want to hear this but DUMP
HOTMAIL. How many times do you hear “my Hotmail account has
been hacked”? .
I cannot remember the last time I heard someone say my
Gmail/Yahoo/GMX account has been hacked. Remember, even if you
do decide to dump Hotmail and go elsewhere all the above
pointers still apply.
Have a look through the options available to you inside your
email account and see if they offer a means of backing up your
data, it’s not always there but worth having a look for.
This should be the first thing written here but NEVER USE A
PASSWORD FOR MORE THAN ONE ACCOUNT, if the hacker gains access
to your email and finds notifications from Twitfacefriend he
will probably try the same password on those accounts as well,
kiss goodbye to those a few minutes after losing your email
account.
But all is not doom and gloom, don’t be afraid of changing your
email address to something new, in the 50, 60 or 70 odd years
that you have been on this planet you have probably lived at
many addresses and surprisingly everybody you know has managed
to keep in touch. The banks still send letters to your new
address, readers digest still tell you that you may have won a ½
million pounds every year. All your email contacts have the
ability to remember a new email address, email them tell them
that your address has changed, ask them to reply to confirm they
know the new one. You will be surprised how quickly other human
beings can learn a new email address.
Now if all this seems a bit too much effort or bother then yes,
additional security can be seen as an inconvenience. In my
opinion, dealing with a hacked email account is significantly
more inconvenient. It's worth the trouble to do things right.
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