You may be informed that your friends are receiving spam emails from your email id with unusual advertisements and external links. Sometime your password may not accept to login or you may notice someone deleted information from your account or changed your account information.
Once you realize that your email account has been compromised, we strongly recommend you to go through the following steps as soon as possible to reduce the risk of further loss. You can check this article ‘How to check my email hacked or not – 3 Online Tools‘ and it will tell you if you are a victim of massive hacker attacks.
Clean Your PC: The first thing you have to do is to ensure that all computers that you used to open your email have been cleared of all malicious software. Sometime the hacker may use some kind of malicious software to get key log of your pc and hack your password. If that software still on your computer, it’s likely that the attackers will compromise your passwords again. Please check your pc against those software, this article ‘Top 7 free tools for clean performance of your PC‘ will help you to clean your pc. Once your PCs are clean, the next step is change your email password.
Change Your Password: If you are able to login in your email account, change your password. This will prevent a third party from continuing to access your account. If you are not able to login, reset your password with the security questions, or using alternate email or text messaging. Once you logged in please make sure your contact list, alternate email address and inbox emails has not been deleted or changed. When you change your password, select a strong password with special characters and number combinations. (eg. StrONg!PaSSword#1)
Send An Email To Your Contacts: Help to stop the spread of the malware by sending a warning email to your contacts saying that your email account compromised and not to click on the links from your email id.
Check Sent Mail Folder: If the emails are actually originating from your account, you can find out those spam emails in your ‘Sent’ mail folder. If you find any unusual email in your Email Inbox, Sent folder or any Custom folder delete them immediately and clear your Trash box.
Wait for few days and watch is there any spam activity for your email account. Gradually the spam activity will stop from your email and you can send green signal to your friends.
Please read this article to protect your online account from hackers in future..