Hacking Corner

Find Unauthorized Activity on Your Email Account

Here are some signs of  unauthorized activity on an email account.

1. Your new emails are marked as Read even if you’ve not read them.

2. Your emails are moved to Trash or even permanently deleted without your notice.

3. Your emails are being forwarded to a third party email address (check your settings->forwarding).

4. Your secondary email address is changed.

If you come across any of the above activities on your email account, then it is a clear indication that your email account is hacked.

Additional Security Features in Gmail to ensure the Safety of your Account

Gmail provides an additional security feature to protect your email account through the means of IP address logging. That is, Gmail records your IP address every time you login to your Gmail account. So, if a third party gets access to your account then even his/her IP is also recorded. To see a list of recorded IP address, scroll down to the bottom of your Gmail account and you’ll see something like this.

You can see from the above figure that Gmail shows the IP address of last login (last account activity). You can click on Details to see the IP address of your last 5 activities. If you find that the IP listed in the logs doesn’t belong to you, then you can suspect unauthorized activity.

Steps to be carried out to stop unauthorized activity on your email account

If you feel/suspect that your account is hacked then you must immediately take the actions mentioned below 

1. Change your Password

2. Change your security question.

2. Remove any third party email address (if any) to which your account is set to forward emails.

3. Make sure that you can access the email account of your secondary email address.

4. Also change you secondary email password and security question.

This ensures that your account is safe from future attacks. But I strongly recommend that you read the following post to protect your email account from being hacked.