Hack-Proofing your Gmail Account.

Posted by levoltz on June 30, 2009 in How-To | 1 Comment

Do you suspect any unauthorized activity on your email account? Do you want to make it 100% hack proof? In most cases, the email id of the victim gets hacked and the victim has no clue. We might be thinking that all our confidential and private information are safe but in reality they might not be.

Here are some signs you need to look out for unauthorized activity on your email account:

- Emails are forwarded to a unknown email address (check your email account settings->forwarding).

- The secondary email id has changed to unknown email id.

- New emails are marked READ even before you read it.

- New filters set up in your email account.

If you are facing any of the above-mentioned activities then, it clearly indicates that your email id has been hacked.

Securing your Gmail id:

Gmail has additional features like IP address logging to secure your email. So, if your account is hacked then the IP address is recorded and the next time you login, you’ll be able to see the IP address.

Gmail account hack
The above image shows the IP address of the last login. You can view the IP address of last 5 activities by clicking on Details. If the last 5 activities has any IP that doesn’t belong to you then you need to secure the email id immediately to stop further unauthorized activities.

The steps to follow:
- Change your password (make it 8 or more alpha-numeric characters)
- Change your security question and answer.
- Change your Secondary email id.
- Remove any unknown filters.
- Disable POP3 and IMAP access to your email id.

This would make sure that you don’t get hacked further.