How to Know if My Email Has Been Hacked | Antivirus Software

On more than one occasion you may have wondered if your email is hacked, especially when you know of a cyber attack. It is normal that as a user you worry about the privacy of your data, especially if you usually use the same email password in other accounts. Thousands of email accounts are stolen every year using Trojans or phishing.

The biggest danger is that your access data ends up in the possession of criminals, who can cause great damage. There are several ways to find out if your email has been hacked, including online sites, as well as ways to prevent this from happening.

Importance of keeping your email account secure

If your email has been hacked, cybercriminals can likely impersonate your identity, presenting a case of identity theft on the Internet. When your identity is stolen, these people can make purchases online using your name, use your account to send bulk spam or Trojans, use your name to try to scam your contacts.

This can result in you suffering financial loss, damage to your reputation, or your account being used to carry out criminal activities that harm other people. The hacking of an email account does not affect only the user but can affect many people, for example, with the massive sending of Trojans or some malicious code that can affect computers or cause financial damage. That is why it is necessary to establish different security measures to protect your email account.

Basic signs that email has been hacked

One of the ways to know that the email has been hacked is to pay attention to the different warning signs that may appear and that may indicate that the security of the account has been violated, such as the following:

Commonly used programs and files cannot be opened or do not work.

Files and documents have disappeared without the user have deleted them.

You can find new programs installed on your desktop.

The computer begins to open pages in the Internet browser without being requested.

The operating system is constantly opening up and requesting a software download, installation, or update.

When searching the Internet they are redirected to pages, which are almost always harmful.

Antivirus software seems to be not activated or not working

The contacts that are saved in the list of email addresses begin to receive false emails from your account, which the user does not know they have sent.

Expenses appear on the credit card that has not been made.

Ways to know if your Gmail account has been hacked

To check if your Gmail account has been hacked, you must follow the following steps:

In your inbox, scroll to the bottom of the screen and notice the small letters at the bottom right.

There you will find the phrase Last account activity: X minutes ago; below it there is a link to consult called Details, where you must click to open a new window.

In this window, check if the times, places, and IP addresses of the devices from where you have recently accessed your Gmail account match.

If a foreign country appears, which is usually the United States, it is because you have shared a link by email from a website or application. It is also because some of the connections may have been made from applications that have permission to access your Gmail account.

If there is any suspicious information, it is recommended that you change the password immediately, so that someone else cannot re-enter.

In the case of what arouses suspicion are the accesses of applications, check which are those that have access to your profile by entering the Security section of your Google account.

It is recommended that you perform the Security Review and go to the list of Recently used devices.

If any seem strange, immediately remove the access permission and change the password.

Below are the programs that have permission to enter your Google accounts, not only in Gmail but also in Drive, Games, and others. Do a review of which ones you need and then remove the permission from the rest.

After completing these steps, you should have fixed any intrusion into your Gmail account. It is recommended that you carry out this other check:

Enter your inbox and check the Trash to see if any suspicious messages have been deleted by a possible hacker.

It also checks the filters, to rule out that they had been manipulated, as well as the email redirects, which may have been modified.

If your Gmail account has been hacked and you cannot access your account, and you cannot perform all this procedure, the next step is to answer all the questions on the Google account recovery form and apply the advice provided by the company, to increase the chances of recovering your Gmail account.

How to find out if your email was hacked?

To check if your email has been hacked, you can go to web pages that use different methods, such as, for example, analyzing botnets or data leaks, to determine if an email account has been hacked. Botnets are networks of infected computers that are used for criminal purposes without the knowledge of the user. The bot's software is installed on the user's computer using fake emails.

You must bear in mind that there are no protection measures that are 100% secure against spyware or against botnets. But it is recommended that you have an antivirus installed and updated on your computer and that the Firewall is always activated. The main rule is that you do not open any file that has a dubious origin and questions the veracity of some emails of offers and promotions, especially if they are financial.

Some of the Internet sites that can help you online to find out if your email has been hacked are the following:

Have I Been Pwned?

This is a site that is available in English and was developed by security experts. The page offers a way to check if the email account has been hacked. The method they use to evaluate is based on the security flaws of recognized sites, with more than 350 different pages and 7.8 billion malicious addresses in their database. This tool not only does a complete analysis of your email address but also checks the user names that are used for different websites.

Have I Been Pwned? It also offers some additional features:

It has the Notify me notification function, which is responsible for notifying if, at any point, your email address or username appears in any of the data leaks. To do this, you just have to enter your email address and solve a puzzle, which is part of the security procedure (known as Captcha). This last step is done to rule out that it is a robot and that you are a real person, giving greater protection to the service.

If you are not sure that your account has been the victim of data theft by a web page, go to the Who's been pwned section, which offers users to obtain information on everything related to the theft, information leakage, and the consequences it produces.

BreachAlarm

This is another website specialized in detecting hacked emails. Its operation is very similar to the one on the previous page. When you enter your email address, the page begins to search the Internet for all passwords that have been stolen or published by hackers.

On many occasions, the stolen email addresses and their respective passwords are traded on the deep web and in hacker forums. This page searches for stolen passwords on the deep web. They currently have a database of more than 828 million unique email addresses.

The BreachAlarm page offers users the option to subscribe to its notification service. If in the future the password of any of the emails is published on the Internet, the page will immediately send a warning email. In this way, people who have been affected can take security measures, such as changing the password to prevent further damage.

Another tool they offer is aimed in particular at corporate users and can be found in Business. This tool allows you to register and control company domains. This makes it possible to identify in just a few steps, how many employee-owned accounts are affected by a privacy breach and possible data theft. This functionality also offers the Warnmodus tool, which is an alert mode in case of future password theft.

Firefox Monitor

Mozilla developers have included since 2018, a web tool with which you can check if your email has been hacked. This one, called Firefox Monitor, gets data from the Have I Been Pwned? Page. The verification process is the same as on the other pages: enter the email address and click on the Search button in Firefox Monitor. In a very short time, the message is received informing if the email account was hacked or if it is affected by an information leak.

In case the email address is no longer secure, Firefox Monitor offers the possibility of receiving a notification by postal mail. In the same way, you can also receive periodic information about the current security situation of the email account.

To be able to use this offer, you need to create a Firefox account: just click on Subscribe, enter the email address you want to analyze, and then create the username and password for the login for the Firefox account. Mozilla sends a confirmation message, which you can use to activate both the account and the warning message.

Identity Leak Checker

This tool is offered by the Hasso Plattner Institute of Germany. It is also available in English and is based on the exploration of Internet databases, to search for identity theft.

To do the analysis, you must enter an email address and click on Check e-mail address !. The data synchronization allows showing if the password of the account has been hacked, as well as if any type of personal information has been published or misused on the Internet, including the telephone number, address, or date of birth.

After the analysis is carried out, a response message is received by email, in which it is informed if the email has been hacked and about the personal data that has been published on the Internet. In addition, Identity Leak Checker reports on how and when the data theft took place.

Measures to take if the email has been hacked

If you manage to verify that your email has been hacked, you should take some measures to try to minimize or cancel the damage that may occur. These measurements are:

Run the antivirus program

This is the main measure that should be followed, according to cybersecurity experts, when it is verified that the email has been hacked. Run a comprehensive antivirus scan, bypassing the quick scan settings, for the antivirus to perform an in-depth scan that identifies and removes all forms of malware, including Trojans and spyware for keyloggers, as well as potentially dangerous applications.

In most cases, hackers do not just send messages to your contacts, but they look for a way to carry out scams and fraud with your name or access your bank accounts. For example, if you make bank transfers periodically, they can make these transfers without your authorization, changing the receiving account, which causes you to lose money.

If you know that your email has been hacked, the faster you run an antivirus scan, the better. You must check that your system is totally clean before entering or changing any confidential information, to avoid a repeat hacking.

Change all passwords

When you clean the computer of all malware, you should proceed to change your password. If you have lost access to your account, contact the email provider directly to prove who you are and request a password reset.

To reset it, remember the following measures:

You should choose a new password that is totally different from the old one and make sure that it does not contain character strings or that the numbers are repeated.

Do not be tempted to use passwords that are related to your name, date of birth, or some similar personal information, since, in general, hackers can decipher this information very easily, and they are the ones they use in the first option when trying to access your account.

You must use a unique password for each account; that has a certain degree of complexity, preferably a combination of letters, numbers, and special characters; and that is at least 15 characters long.

Notify other online services

It is also essential that you change the passwords of other accounts based on payments, such as Amazon, credit card companies, and even local services, to prevent hackers from compromising these accounts.

In many cases, hacking occurs by repeatedly using the same password on several sites, but even having different passwords does not imply greater security, in the case that you access messages in the email, which leads to false web pages.

Inform all your contacts

Another measure to take is to notify your friends and family and the people on your email contact list that you have suffered an attack. During the time that hackers have control of your account, they can send numerous emails with malware to everyone on the list, thus creating a new set of victims. Informing your contacts allows them to take steps to protect their devices and make sure they are clean, avoiding being affected.

Change security questions

Password is generally the most likely gateway to attack, but there is the possibility that hackers will gain access to your account by answering security questions. The vast majority of users tend to choose the same answers to the most common security questions.

The best recommendation to protect your email is using multi-factor authentication, which many providers already offer to access your password, including the use of secondary email addresses or text messages because Sometimes security questions don't seem to be enough.

Notify about the attack

If you haven't, contact your email provider and report the attack on your account. This is important, even if you haven't lost access to your hacked email, as it allows service providers to track scam-based behavior. Furthermore, on many occasions, the service provider can offer important information about the possible origin or nature of the attack.

Create a new email account

Sometimes it is not worth the work of recovering an account, either because it is not the first time that the email has presented security problems, or if the provider does not seem to have taken the appropriate measures to reduce the amount of spam you receive.

Look for a service that guarantees email encryption by default and also has highly efficient customer service in case of security problems.

Contact banks and credit bureaus

Hackers know that, by sending a fake email from bank or credit agency accounts, there is a high possibility of obtaining access data. Scammers try to establish personal contact, to convince you to share your personal information before you start using your accounts and making purchases with your credit card or making scams.

In general, the scope of hackers goes far beyond what the email attack implies, so it is a good idea to contact banks and credit agencies to request a report on the movement of your accounts.

Analyze your ID protection options

If you have suffered an attack, another measure to consider is ID protection services. These offer real-time email monitoring, as well as providing personal assistance in the event of identity theft.

This type of service has a somewhat high cost, due to the type of protection they provide, so you must make sure to look for companies with a good reputation, and use legitimate services, to avoid falling into a camouflaged hacker scam, which appropriates Your personal information.

Establish total protection

Run an antivirus scan on each of your connected devices, including laptop, tablet, and mobile, to make sure the attack didn't bridge the gap between platforms and infected all of your devices. Also take the appropriate measures to protect the cloud, as it can also be attacked.

It is essential that you keep your antivirus protection up to date, and that you switch from basic protection to full-time Internet security protection, that it proactively blocks new and unknown threats, and that it also offers you security in all your online activity, instead of having to clean your computer after the attack happens.

Steps to keep your email account private

To avoid having to go through unpleasant experiences, such as identity theft and financial losses due to hacking your email account, it is important to take some security measures:

Use a strong password

You must use a strong password, which is difficult to discover, it must contain a combination of uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols. It is a very common mistake to use a password that can be easily guessed and to avoid using any of the passwords that appear in the list of more than 500 million passwords that have been leaked and that are the basis for hackers to attack the email accounts.

Also, spammers generally know that large numbers of people use the same password across different sites and services. Therefore, it is recommended that you use a different password for each site, as mentioned above.

Do not enter suspicious links

We should never enter the link of an email message that you do not know, only if you have total security after having verified and verified the identity of the sender. Also, do not click on images that can lead to fake websites, which are designed to collect your personal information or to infect the system with malware.

You should also check the logos as they may look legitimate, but when you click on them they lead to malicious sites. Unsubscribe links can cause the spammer to verify that your address is valid and, more importantly, these links are very easily established and often lead to malware infections.

Do not reply to spam messages or unsolicited emails

For all people, spam is usually very annoying, so you can likely react to them by letting yourself be carried away by emotions, and end up responding to these messages.

Responding to spam can cause two main problems:

Most spam messages come from fake addresses, so it is highly unlikely that the spammer will ever receive the message.

When the spam message is replied to, the spammer can verify the email address as legitimate, which can lead to more spam.

Avoid posting your email in blog posts, online comments, social media, or social media.

Most scammers lurk on social media to obtain email addresses that they can exploit. It is recommended that if you must publish an email address on one of these sites so that they can contact you, mask your address by adding spaces or spelling (at) or (at) to avoid using the at (@).

Use encryption

All email messages are transmitted in plain text by default, which makes them more exposed and increases the possibility that they can be intercepted by third parties. While SSL and TLS are used to encrypt the connection between mail clients and mail servers, it is good practice to encrypt the email message automatically. The purpose of encryption is to protect private data, using the conversion from plain text to ciphertext. Encrypted text can only be decrypted using the private encryption key for that server.

Use two-factor authentication

It is often not enough to just use passwords to protect your data against any attack, which is more sophisticated day by day. When setting up two-factor authentication, users must provide a password and then a unique verification code, which is sent by one of the two-factor authentication apps, such as Authy or Google Authenticator, that are available. in the Google Play store.

Be aware of the risks of using public Wi-Fi and insecure networks

While using a public Wi-Fi connection offers a convenient way to access the Internet while you're away from home, if you're not careful, it can affect your privacy. Public Wi-Fi access points may not have any guarantee of security, being one of the main targets of hackers, who often establish themselves between your computer and the Internet connection, thus being able to intercept the information you transmit.

Hackers can also use these unsecured Wi-Fi access points to distribute malware. If you do file sharing, files are very vulnerable. To reduce any risk, make sure the Wi-Fi access points are connected to a trusted source. If you have to connect to a public access point, it is a good security measure to use a VPN, to be sure that the data is transmitted in encrypted form.

Lock the team when you get away from it

It may seem like an obvious piece of advice, but a computer that has not been locked allows anyone to have access to the information it contains. You may not consider this to be a serious problem, especially if you work in a small place, but if you work in an industry that has privacy regulations in place, everything changes.

In larger companies, financial information is handled or confidential company information can be stored, such as bank accounts or other confidential information, so if you leave your computer unlocked, it can have serious consequences, in addition to the loss of information. , job loss, damage to the company's reputation, and even legal problems.

In conclusion, it is important to maintain the security of your email account, to avoid going through really unpleasant situations. To do this, you must take the appropriate security measures and check if your email account has been hacked, especially when you suspect that it has happened, to prevent your contacts from going through the same thing, and you can prevent further damage from occurring.