3 Ways to Check if Gmail is Hacked !!

3 Ways to Check if Gmail is Hacked !!

Gmail being one of the popular and widely used free Email client, is always targeted by Hackers. More over most of the time people won’t even realized even if Gmail is hacked. There are some ways, by which hacker will be able to read your Email without loging into your Gmail account, like by Using Gmail for mobile, IMAP feature, Email forwarding and so on. Though in such cases, we have features like Gmail last account activity, which comes out to be a life saver for many. Anyways, in this post we will look into some of the easiest way to find out if your Gmail is hacked or compromised.  These, tips are very useful for every Gmail users, and even if your Google account is not hacked for now, it’s always  a good idea to keep an eye and know about how to monitor unusual activities.

We all know that security is the first thing that we should take care of while working online. I was talking to a friend and who happens to be self proclaimed hacker and I had some interesting conversation regarding social engineering and how easily he hacks a Gmail or Facebook account. Though he also mentioned that it’s easy to find if your Gmail account is hacked without using any 3rd party tool.

He mentioned that one of the easiest way that he used is by Gmail fake pages. I won’t get into more details on how he is hacking people Email address, but in this post, I will be sharing two quick tip which you can use to cross-check if your Gmail account is hacked.

3 FEATURES TO CROSSCHECK IF GMAIL IS HACKED OR NOT:

Gmail last account activity feature:

Gmail introduced last account activity feature long time back. Last account activity shows the location, IP, Method and time when your Gmail was accessed. It shows the last 10 login along with current one. So first thing, which you should do is click on last account activity at the bottom of your Gmail account and check when and where your Gmail account was accessed last time. This will give you an idea if your Gmail account is being used by someone. More over, you can also logout any other logged in users from other system using last account activity page.

Email forwarding:

This is another useful feature by Gmail team which will let us forward any Email coming to our Gmail account to any other account. Hackers usually forward all Emails to their account and since this feature is not being used by many, people never realize that some one else is reading their Email. So you can go to this page and check if your Email is forwarded to any Email address.

POP and IMAP Setting for Gmail:

IMAP and POP feature will let you access your email on any 3rd party client using any of these two protocol. The issue is anyone can configure their Email client to receive your Email if they get access to your password. So at the same time, hacker will also be receiving your important Emails. If you are not using IMAP or POP feature, it’s better to keep them disabled. Also make sure you follow above step 1, as if any hacker already configured his Email client using your Gmail account, in the activity field you might see some unexpected location and I.P.

If you ever feel your Gmail account is hacked, you should change your password immediately along with your security question, password recovery Email and check registered phone number. It’s good to be paranoid about security but never be too confident about your preventive measures.  It’s better to keep a close eye on your account for any unusual activties and if you give access to your Gmail account to any 3rd party sites like rapportive or anyone else, make sure you read about the review and feedback from online community.