Your email account is your most valuable online account. Learn how to protect your email account with a few easy steps to keep it secure and keep hackers out.
By hacking your email a scammer can send emails out from your valid email address to everyone in your contact list, claiming to be you. They have immediate verification in the eyes of your friends and family. It’s a great way for criminals to quickly access a high number of people for further scamming.
A scammer would also have access to all of your emails, some of which may contain sensitive information, but they’ll also be able to work out which other online accounts you have and will quickly access those, either by using the same password as you have used for your email account, or they can change your password.
At best, you’ll still have access to your email account, not knowing the fraudsters are also using it as part of their plan. At worst, you’ll be locked out of your account and may lose access to it permanently. You are also putting all your contacts, friends and family at risk of being scammed.
But what can you do to avoid being a victim of a hacked email account?
- Set up Two Factor Authentication (2FA). With 2FA, if you are logging in from a non-trusted machine, like a hacker would be doing, you not only need a password to sign into your email, but you also need something physically that is in your possession, like your mobile phone.
- Don’t use the same password for your email account and ANY other account. If your email and password gets stolen in a data breach and you have used the same password for your email account, this leaves you vulnerable. If you haven’t set up 2FA, a criminal can easily access your account.
- Check your recovery contact information. Most email providers will ask you for recovery details when you set up an email account, but if you have had the account for a while, you might not have provided that information or it may be out of date. Your recovery details can help you if you are locked out of your account, or have forgotten your password.
If you need help checking or setting this up correctly, call in and see us. You will need your passwords and please bring all the devices you access your email on.
