Dealing with an email hack can be a nightmare and send you scrambling to figure out who may have hacked your email and why. However, this information can be a bit difficult to track down, so it is important to take steps to secure your email against future hacks, while you investigate the problem.
Our article gives you signs to look out for that indicate a potential email hack, steps to take after your email has been hacked, and information on finding out who hacked your email in the first place.
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How Do Emails Get Hacked?
Data breaches are the most common ways that emails get hacked; data breaches are typically a result of hackers infiltrating a company’s database of information and retrieving all of the email addresses saved there. The hackers will use the information that they gather to gain entrance into a number of people’s email accounts and run scams such as sending out emails asking for money, hacking into your social media accounts, and stealing your personal information to run identity theft scams.
Other common ways that your email might be hacked is by accidentally inputting it into websites that are not privacy protected or through a social media hack that accesses all of your information. So it is vital to create unique passwords and enable two-factor authentication to lower the chances of your private information being accessed.
Signs That Your Email Has Been Hacked
There are a few signs that indicate your email has been hacked and that it is time to go into damage control mode as you evaluate the extent of the damage. Fortunately, if you catch your email hack early on, your private information is less likely to be compromised.
You Can’t Log Into Your Email Account
Chances are, if you’ve been hacked, you will no longer be able to log into your email account. When you try to log in, you will receive a message about your username or password being incorrect. Typically, a hacker will change the password to your email account after gaining access to it in order to keep you out while they work on sending out spam and other troublesome emails.
Your Sent Messages Folder Appears Strange
If you are able to log into your email account, you should check your sent messages folder. The folder may be completely empty, a result of the hacker deleting sent messages and their tracks, or it may be full of spam and scam messages that you neither wrote nor sent.
Friends Report Receiving Spam
After your email gets hacked, friends and relatives may report back to you that they’ve been receiving spam messages either through your email or over social media. This is one of the clearest signs—besides not being able to log into your email account—that your email has been hacked.
Your Social Media Accounts Have Been Hacked
Your social media is most likely connected to your email address, and once a hacker gets access to your email, they can easily reset your password to other websites. If strange messages or posts start to appear on your social media accounts, or you can no longer log into your social media accounts, you have probably been hacked.
Your IP Address Looks Odd
Your IP address shows your location when you log onto the internet and the area that you send things from. A record of your IP address will show that you are typically at home or work, but if you find a log of your IP address and it shows a bunch of different locations, it could indicate that a hacker is logging into your email account from elsewhere in the world.
Steps To Take if Your Email Has Been Hacked
If you suspect that your email has been hacked or you are starting to get scam messages through your online accounts that confirm a hacking has taken place, there are some immediate steps that you should take to minimize damage.
Change Your Email Credentials
If you have access to your account, immediately change your username and password. Make sure that you choose a strong password that includes a mix of numbers, capital and lowercase letters, and symbols. When possible, use a different unique password for every online account to make hacking across all of your most-visited websites much more difficult to achieve.
If you don’t still have access to your email account, then you will likely need to reach out to your email service provider for more help. With assistance from the professionals, you can regain access to your email account and start changing all of your login credentials.
Make sure that you also change the answers to your security questions and use answers that cannot easily be found on social media or through other guesswork. For example, in addition to changing your email credentials, change your logins for social media accounts and turn on a two-step authentication process where possible. This extra step makes it much more difficult for hackers to get into any of your accounts, as it requires a temporary password often sent to your phone in addition to your username and password to gain login access.
Speak With Your Contacts
If your email has been hacked, chances are the culprits intend to send out spam and scam emails to as many people as possible before they get caught. So make sure to warn your email contacts, such as friends, family, and colleagues, that your email has been hacked and request that they don’t click on any suspicious messages, links, or applications.
It may be a bit embarrassing to confess that your email and social media accounts have been hacked, but warning your contacts is better than letting them fall for a scam or falling prey to identity and monetary theft.
Check Your Settings for Signs of Scams
When hackers gain access to your email account, they may infiltrate your settings in a way that allows them to log back into your account even after you’ve changed your credentials and taken back control of the account. You can make sure this isn’t the case by checking your settings.
Ensure that your email signature doesn’t contain unfamiliar links, and make sure your emails are not set on auto-forward to end up somewhere else. Next, run a computer scan to look for signs of computer viruses or malware, and quickly check unfamiliar applications connected to your email account, browser, or social media accounts.
Take Preventative Steps
After you’ve dealt with the main part of an email hack, you should be taking steps to prevent email hacks from happening in the future. This includes frequently updating your devices and email accounts to ensure that the most updated security measures are in place. Also, take time to install reputable security software that helps you catch malware, spyware, viruses, and suspicious internet links that can put you at risk for an email hack.
Finding the Email Hacker Culprit
Many individuals who have dealt with an email hack want to know the culprit behind it and if there is anything they can do to make the hacker accountable. However, this can be quite a difficult process as email hackers move mostly undetected and have a variety of safety nets in place that stop them from being caught.
In cases that involve a simple email hack, it can be difficult to find the hacker, even if you perform an IP address search. However, a reverse search tool can allow you to look up people by name, email, or phone number, which can help you out if you have any of this information available. You can even look up your own hacked email address with these search tools to see if your email has been connected to any other suspicious accounts and find more information that way.
Also, when hackers have invaded your email and used the information they gain to infiltrate your bank accounts, steal large sums of money, or commit other crimes, you may be able to get law enforcement involved. This process involves speaking to police officers and working with them as they investigate the hacking event. However, remember that even if you get law enforcement involved, it may still be very difficult to narrow down the exact culprit of the email hack.
Securing Your Email Account for the Future
Email hacks are never fun to deal with, and finding out that you have been a victim of an email hack is undoubtedly upsetting. However, if you act quickly at the first signs of an email hack and methodically change all of your credentials, you can regain control of your account and minimize damage, in addition to strengthening your accounts against future hacking attacks.
Unfortunately, it can often be impossible to find the culprit of your email hack and bring them to justice. If the hack is serious enough to reach out to law enforcement, you should start there. If not, you might need to stick with securing your email accounts and ensuring your chances of a repeat email hack are greatly reduced.