My Gmail account was hacked!

My Gmail account was hacked last week and I only found out when I realised that my blog was removed by someone! The hackers changed my password, disabled my Gmail account and removed my blog. Luckily I didn’t have any Paypal accounts or bank accounts linked to this email as I believe most of the hackers are after money. I hope none of my friends received my email asking for money, if you do so, please let me know!

I was very calm when I found out this incident. Immediately I submitted a form to Gmail and hoped to recover my account as quickly as possible. I was asked a few questions by the Gmail team to determine if I am the correct account owner. Thanks GOD, I got the answers right and I managed to recover my account after 2 hours.

After I managed to login to my account, the very first thing I did was to change my account password and recovered my blog. I found out that the hacker used an I.P address from Mexico and Egypt (at the bottom of each webpage on Gmail, click on the "Details" option and it will take you to a webpage describing the type of access and the IP address of the computer which logged into your email account. This will help you spy if someone has been accessing your account).

This incident was really an eye-opener for me but it’s a blessing in disguise in some ways. I have learnt that we have to choose a unique and hard-to-crack-password, never use the same username and password on multiple websites & also don’t use dictionary word as your password.

Don't delay, be sensible and make your passwords more secure today!