Good Gossiping

Don’t we hate that email that goes out to friends telling them while on a sudden trip to Europe you were robbed and oh by the way, send money! Thanks to www.switched.com here is the “Treatment”

Depending on the kind of hack you’ve been dealt, the treatment may be as simple as logging in, and changing your settings and password. Or it may entail agonizingly repeated attempts to lock out a persistent hacker, potentially killing off your account altogether. But you should never just give up and ditch the account without trying to deal with it first.

If you aren’t able to log in, you’re likely going to have to go through some frustrating hoop jumping. Conveniently, Twitter’s help page has a handy list of links for all the major e-mail services’ support pages.

Each service has its own method for determining that you are who you say you are, and are not the person who hacked — or is planning to hack — your account. Besides pre-set security questions, they may ask specific details about messages you’ve sent, and even the exact day you set up the account. If you don’t have a copy of your initial registration e-mail, try contacting a close friend whom you would have e-mailed at the time, and ask them to dig into their archives for your early missives.

If you can log in:

1. Make sure your PC is current with OS updates and anti-virus/malware software. Otherwise, if it has been infected by malware that spies on you, it will continue to transmit your info to whichever hacker has infiltrated your accounts. If you aren’t completely sure your PC is clean, then don’t do any of the following. Any changes you attempt to make could be forwarded on by malware, too.
2. Depending on how your account has been abused, you may not need to contact everyone spammed by your hacked e-mail. (Your scam-savvy friends will recognize bogus messages as spam.) But, if there is a personal appeal for money — saying you’re stuck traveling and need cash, or are hurt and in a hospital — or if malware was attached, you should send word to your contact list to delete those messages ASAP.
3. Set up at least two new e-mail addresses. Use your original e-mail address for personal or business communication as you’d normally do. The secondary e-mail address is insurance against future hacks; use it to communicate with your service provider, since many now ask for an alternative address as added protection. Then, use a third e-mail address only for registering for sites, newsletters, online shopping and other services. It may seem paranoid and excessive (hey, that’s us!), but the idea is to compartmentalize your online life a bit. That way, each “world” has its own discrete e-mail account, and will minimize the damage that can be done by any future hacks. Most importantly, though: use a different and strong password for each account — one that is at least six characters long, and is a combination of letters, numbers and capitals/lowercase. It sounds difficult, but it isn’t. It’ll help prevent any hacker from gaining access to all of your data simply by infiltrating one site.
4. On a secure PC, log into your e-mail and then check whether or not any of the settings have been changed by a hacker. Smart hackers may set your account to notify them of any changes, so that they can go back in and switch things again. Check whether or not a signature has been added, and whether your account has been set to forward e-mail to another address that isn’t yours or to run a filter that automatically forwards e-mails or attaches a file. If any of those settings have been altered, delete the new settings.
5. Once you have changed the settings, create a new password, and add your secondary e-mail account as your alternative address.
6. Going forward, never list your main e-mail address publicly anywhere online — in forums, in online ads, on blogs or any place where they can be harvested by spammers. Use only your “registration” address, and keep it separate from your main address book.
7. Don’t use public computers to check e-mail; there’s virtually no way to know if they are infected with malware accidentally, or have keylogging spyware installed intentionally. But if you absolutely must use e-mail on a public computer, set up an extra account before you leave and change the password regularly.