My email got hacked, or I think it did – what do I do right now?
First off, don’t panic – change your email password right now to something you’ve never used before, then turn on two-factor authentication so they can’t just walk back in. After that, we need to check if they left any “back doors” open like sneaky forwarding rules or backup email addresses they added to steal your password resets.
Quick things to check first
- Log in and change your password immediately – use a long passphrase that’s at least 12-15 characters and totally different from anything else you use.
- Turn on two-factor authentication (also called 2FA or MFA) – this means even if someone gets your password, they need a code from your phone to get in.
- Check your sent folder and ask a couple trusted friends if they got weird emails from you recently – that confirms whether someone was actually in your account.
- Go into your account settings and look at the recovery or backup email addresses and phone numbers – delete any you don’t recognize, because hackers add these to steal future password resets.
- Check your “recent activity” or “security” page – most providers like Google and Microsoft show you a list of devices and locations that recently accessed your account. If you see something that isn’t you, there’s your sign.
If that didn’t fix it
- Open your email settings and hunt for “forwarding rules” or “inbox rules” – hackers love to set these up so every email you get quietly copies to them. Delete any rule you didn’t create yourself, especially ones forwarding to addresses you don’t recognize.
- Check “connected apps” or “third-party permissions” in your account settings – this is where hackers sometimes link another app to your email so they keep access even after you change your password. Revoke anything you don’t use or recognize.
- Update your antivirus and run a full system scan – if your computer itself got infected with malware, that’s how they grabbed your password in the first place, and changing it won’t help if the malware is still watching. If the scan finds something, let it clean or delete the threat, then restart your computer before doing anything else with that email account.
- Go directly to your email provider’s official recovery page by typing the URL yourself – do NOT click any links in emails claiming to help you recover your account, because those are often phishing traps pretending to be support.
When to call a pro
If you change your password and the hackers somehow get back in within hours, you’ve got malware on your machine that needs professional removal. If you can’t log in at all because they changed your password and recovery info first, you need someone who knows the provider’s recovery process inside and out. And if this is a work email, stop messing around and call your IT department immediately – they need to know right away because your account could be a doorway into the whole company network.
Pro tip
Stop reusing passwords across accounts – that’s how most email hacks happen, someone grabs your password from a smaller site breach and tries it on your email. Get a password manager so you only have to remember one strong master password and it handles the rest. And turn on two-factor authentication everywhere, not just email – it’s annoying for about two days and then you forget it’s there, but it stops the vast majority of account takeovers cold.