While a hacker has access to your account, they might leave your password alone so you won’t notice the hack for a while longer.īut whether they change your password or not, they may change all of the recovery information. Change or confirm your recovery information
See Changing your password is not enough. In fact, the longer the better, but make sure your new password is at least 12 characters, and ideally 16 or more (if the service supports it). Once you regain access to your account (or if you never lost it), immediately change your password.Īs always, make sure it’s a good password: easy to remember, difficult to guess, and long. You’ll need to set up a new account from scratch and start over. Unless you’ve backed it up, everything in it is gone forever, and you can skip to Step 5.
Important: If you cannot recover access to your account, it is now someone else’s account. For paid accounts, there are typically additional customer service options that are more likely to be able to help. Your options are generally limited to self-service recovery forms, knowledge base articles, and official discussion forums where service representatives may (or may not) participate. For free email accounts, there is usually no customer service. If recovery options don’t work for whatever reason, your only recourse is to use the customer service phone numbers or email addresses provided by that email service. If the recovery methods don’t work - because the hacker changed everything or because you no longer have access to the old alternate email or phone - you may be out of luck. This usually means the service will send password-reset instructions to an alternate email address that you have access to, or send a text message to a mobile phone number you set up previously. You must then use the “I forgot my password” or equivalent account recovery options offered by the service. The password you know is no longer the correct password. If you can’t log in, even though you’re sure you’re using the right password, then the hacker has probably changed your password. If you can log in successfully, consider yourself extremely lucky, and proceed to Step 2 right away. Log in to your account using your email provider’s website. Check all related accounts for possible compromise.Īnd perhaps above all: learn from the experience so it doesn’t happen again.Check your out-of-office messages, auto-responders, forwards, and signatures.Verify and/or change your account recovery information.If your email is hacked, here’s how you fix it:
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