If you have a security question associated with your account, make up a response that makes no sense. When Yahoo had 500 million accounts hacked in 2014, not only were the passwords stolen but the security questions too. And please make it unpredictable and niche! It is possible that this was how the hackers broke into your account in the first place. If you have a security questions associated with your email account, please change this too. Send a message to all your email contacts as soon as possible so they know to avoid opening any emails (most likely loaded with malware) that have come from you. Let Your Email Contacts KnowĪ big part of the hacker’s strategy is to ‘get their claws’ into your address book with the aim of hooking others as well. If you find the hacker has locked you out of your account by changing your password, you will need to rest the password to by clicking on the Forgot My Password link. I really like the idea of a crazy, nonsensical sentence – easier to remember and harder to crack! Always use at least 8-10 characters with a variety of upper and lower case and throw in some symbols and numbers. It is essential that your new password is complex and totally unrelated to previous passwords. This is the very first thing you must do to ensure the hacker can’t get back into your account.
If you find yourself a victim of email hacking there are a few very important steps you need to take. Regardless of which statistic you choose to focus on, we have a big issue on our hands! So, What Do I Do If My Email Is Hacked? The Australian Cyber Security Centre nominates $20 million as the fallout from ‘phony emails’ aka phishing in 2016/7. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) recently revealed that hacking scams cost Australian businesses close to $3 million during 2016 with the number of people reporting scams activity at record levels. There is a plethora of statistics on just how big this issue is – all of them concerning!Īccording to IDCARE – a support service for Australian and New Zealand victims of identity fraud – about 1 million Australian have their identity stolen each year at a cost of about $1 billion. So, you can see why they’d be interested in you! How Big Is the Problem?
Email password hacking full#
Some experts believe they can get as much as AU$140 for a full set of details including credit cards. But the more sophisticated ones will sell your details including name, telephone, email address and credit card details and cash in on The Dark Web. Why – I hear you ask? So, they can cash in! Some will keep the juicy stuff for themselves – passwords or logins to government departments or large companies they may want to ’target’. Remember, hackers want to get their hands on your data. If you have an identity and email address you are very valuable to a hacker – no exceptions! Even if you don’t consider yourself to have Kim Kardashian’s celebrity status or the CEO power of James Packer, a hacker is still very keen to collect every piece of information they can about you. So, in short – it can happen to anyone… But Why Should I Worry? I Have Nothing Valuable in My Email And recent reports have confirmed that thousands of Australian Government Officials including high-profile politicians, Defence Officials, judges and members of the Australian Federal Police were among the victims. A whopping 3 billion accounts with stolen data including names, email addresses, phone numbers and birth dates. Just this month it was confirmed that every single Yahoo email account was compromised in the 2013 data breach.
Many savvy tech types were caught up in the hack including Troy Hunt, a leading Australian computer security expert and creator of Have I Been Pwned?. In August this year, over 700 million email addresses (and a large number of passwords) were leaked publicly courtesy of a misconfigured spambot (a program designed to collect email addresses). And It’s often a situation that even the savviest tech experts find themselves in. Maybe they found a four-leaf clover when they were kids!Įmail hacking is one of the very unfortunate downsides to living in our connected, digital world. I think I could count on my hand the people I know who have NOT had their email hacked.
0 kommentar(er)
