5.1 Dealing with a Disaster (Your Account Has Been Compromised – But Don’t Panic!)…
So the unthinkable has happened – your email account has been compromised.
You’re probably already in panic mode, when you first realise it’s happened – but that can just make the situation far worse than it has to be.
Yes, your personal information may be in jeopardy, but that doesn’t mean you can’t remedy the situation, with a clear mind and a quick plan of action.
Let’s say that you’ve taken all of the precautions explained in this course and you receive a notification on your phone (you did set up mobile notifications, right?) that some foreign address has logged into your Gmail account. (Side note – you are using Google Mail at this point, aren’t you?)
- The first thing you need to do is remain calm. Get to a computer or a secure internet connection, as soon as possible.
- If you have access to any sort of financial or important accounts on your phone, check them, to make sure they haven’t also been compromised.
- Next, you want to be certain that the email account has actually been broken into. If it hasn’t been, then you just need to make sure you update a few credentials, when you can get to a computer (this will be covered later in this section)
Be careful not to immediately start to request password resets and start trying to move accounts from your email account that were compromised.
The reason for this is because if the “hacker” is monitoring the activity, they may take further steps to secure the account from you getting it back into your possession. They may also become aware of important accounts that were linked to your account, because of the notifications you sent.
If you can’t get to a computer in time, you will need to contact certain accounts by telephone, which you feel might be at risk. This can involve banks, PayPal, credit cards and other monthly payment services. Explain the situation to them and that you need to change your password and credentials, as well as your log in email address, because your email account that is linked to the account is compromised. They will almost always help you out with securing the account you’re calling about.
5.2 Secure connection
When you are finally on a secure computer and internet connection again, you need to begin the process of trying to recover your account, if it has been broken into.
Even if the account hasn’t been accessed, you should still take the time to go through and change your password, your security question and any other details that you believe may have been revealed, or are at risk.
If your account has been accessed, you will need to start by trying to request the password to the emergency/backup email that you created. That’s why having the emergency account is so important.
Furthermore, if you took the time to make sure the login details/credentials differ for the second account from your main account, the chances of the backup account being compromised are greatly decreased.
In order to request the password reset to your emergency account, you might have to answer a few personal questions about your account. If the intruder hasn’t already figured out a way to change this information, you still have a high chance of recovering your account successfully. This is where you may be asked to enter details, such as an account security question, date of birth, maiden name, estimated date of when you created your email account, mobile phone number, backup email account address and more. You may even be asked to confirm the reset, via mobile phone.
If your security question has been changed, along with other details, they may not have reached the secondary email address and changed it, yet.
They may also not have changed the mobile phone number connected to the account. So those two things are your next goal. Sometimes, if you can’t get the questions correct, you can skip over them and are asked to input specific details, such as the mobile number, or the exact recovery account address.
5.3 Follow all of the steps
It is important that you follow all of the steps that the account provider gives you towards getting your account back in your hands again.
These may differ from website to website, but, generally, the information that has been provided and covered in this course is what most of these websites and account providers use, for account security and recovery.
Again, be sure to remain calm throughout the process, as becoming agitated or flustered can dilute the focus on your goal of securing your account.
As you can see – and have probably guessed – there are a number of ways to recover your account and, if you have taken the suggested precautions outlined in this course, you should already have everything at your fingertips necessary to get your account back in your possession.
If you have been successful in getting your account back, then you should immediately take the steps to go through and change all of the personal details. This includes passwords, account security question, date of birth (if necessary), backup email (register a new one) – and so on.
Check your “Outbox” or “Sent Messages” folder, to see if the intruder sent or received any information or data, before you were able to retrieve your account again.
You should also take the time to check on all of the accounts connected to this email account and make certain that they haven’t also been accessed and compromised.
5.4 Unsuccessful
If you have been unsuccessful in getting your account back, then you have a lot of work to do.But remember, staying calm will allow this process to go by a lot easier than it would if you are upset.
Firstly, you need to register a new email account immediately, as well as a new backup account.
Start trying to log in and gain access to any accounts that may be connected to your main (stolen) email account. Be very cautious in the methods you take, so as not to alert the hacker to your activity and to lower your chances of recovering any attached accounts.
Update the connected email addresses on any accounts that were connected to your stolen account and were not compromised, as well. This means connecting them to your new email account.
If you have any financial accounts linked to your stolen email account and they have not been compromised, you need to make haste in logging in and changing the security details and credentials for each account. Move them to a new email address (the new one you created) and even request new credit cards and bank cards with new numbers, to be extra safe.
In the event that any of your other accounts were compromised, you simply need to follow the same steps for trying to re-acquire those accounts, as you have for your main email account. As mentioned before, the steps and process may vary, but, for the most part, the information required to reset or regain access is usually the same across the board (web).
Once you’ve managed to move all of your uncompromised accounts to your new email account, changed passwords and security details etc., you should make it a point to regularly monitor your new email account and other accounts, at least for a few weeks, or even months, to make sure that nothing suspicious happens.
You should already be monitoring your accounts as it is, so this shouldn’t be an issue.
5.5 Contact
Lastly, you will need to contact any individuals, or companies (to an extent), that may have had your stolen email address in their address book and inform them of what happened.
Inform them that they should check the security of their account(s) and even change or update the login credentials, just to be safe. Also, let them know to inform you, if they happen to receive any messages from your stolen email account, or even see any activity from the account.
Regardless of whether you have followed all of the steps and information laid out in this course, there is always going to be a level of risk involved with having an account on the internet. Just like in life, there’s always some sort of risk of some mishap occurring, with just about everything.
The best thing you can do is take pre-emptive measures, to secure your personal and important data and accounts and be prepared in the case of something happening.
Best of luck to you in the future and I hope your days (and years) are filled with entirely headache-free and non-threatening email and account security encounters and usage.
Free Email Service Providers:
Online Random Password Generators:
Free Throwaway Email Service Providers:
Free Link Scanners:
Other Reading:
Password Creation References:
Social Network Privacy Resources:
Free Virus Scanners:
Worksheet
Estimated Time: 30 minutesAs you have just read through one of the most important modules in this course, it is time to test what you have learnt by way of this work.
[Tweet “I just completed Module 5 of the Online Security Course”]
