Despite the many social networks, live chats, and other online messaging apps, emails are still the most common way of communication. Email accounts are needed in order to make any other account as well, and they are the basis on which the rest of the Internet is built upon.
They’re used for pretty much anything, from sending personal messages to your friends, to contacting your bank, college professor, boss, or other important people or services. Today, pretty much anyone has at least one email, which means that those who are trying to benefit from exploiting them have an entire ocean of potential victims.
Your email, or more importantly, the data that it contains, can be used for pretty much anything by people like that. That includes money, pleasure, identity theft, or any other in a wide range of reasons. Your privacy, your entire way of living, or even your life itself might be endangered if someone gets to your important information.
True, these warnings might seem a bit extreme, and not without reason. However, they’re still in the realm of completely possible, which is why they shouldn’t be overlooked. Don’t think that you might not get hacked just because you don’t have a bunch of top government secrets in your email because most hackers aren’t after those at all.
Most of the targets are regular, everyday people, and since they believe that they’re nothing special, they mostly don’t worry much about their security. Which makes them perfect for hacking, as opposed to the government, that has spent mountains of money on the top security systems.
So, how can you prevent that from happening to you? In order to answer that question, we’ve prepared this guide. If you’re not very good with computers, or you’ve just made your first email and you don’t know your way around just yet, simply keep reading, and we’ll explain how to protect yourself.
Steps for securing your email
Every email provider has different security measures, as well as a way to activate them. This includes Yahoo, Gmail, Hotmail, and any other big email service that you might have heard of. What these companies have in common is a variety of security steps that one can take in order to protect his or her account.
Most of the services will send an email with a warning if someone tries to log in from an unusual IP address. One of the most important thing that you can do to prevent someone from logging in is to set up a good, strong password. One of the best ways to generate a strong password is to try and combine words that make no sense in that particular combination. That’ll be hard for anyone to guess, and all you need to do is make sure that you don’t forget it.
Also, another good advice is to always log out of any email or social network that you’re using, even if you’re using it at home. It develops a useful habit, and doing so will ensure that you don’t forget to log out of your accounts when you’re using a less safe device.
Make a complicated address
Your address shouldn’t be too complicated. You still need to be able to remember it easily, but it should contain a number or two, or at least a symbol. Anything, really, just make it a bit harder to guess.
Set a strong password
The password is your account’s first and biggest line of defense. Without it, it’s almost impossible to hack an account, and with it, there’s nothing easier than to do so. When setting up a password, you should try to think of something complicated, and not very meaningful. Of course, you should still remember it, but the best way to do this is to try and figure out a certain system.
One of the examples is to think of a nice, long sentence that you’ll be able to remember, and then use the first letter of every word to create a password. Never use common phrases, but instead combine words that make no sense when put together. Also, include as many different numbers, letters, symbols, and anything else that you can find on your keyboard.
The harder your password is to simply guess by accident, the more secure your account will be, and the possibility of a hack will be lower.
Protect your devices
After securing your email, you should make sure that your computer, phone, and any other device that can be connected to the web is secure as well. Wireless computers without an antivirus protection are bad enough, and it’s even worse if you’re not the only one that’s using it.
Your password might be at risk if that’s the case, even if you’ve taken every step of securing it that we’ve mentioned so far. You must do more, and the first thing is to download a good, strong antivirus software. One of the good examples is Avast, and you can get it on www.avast.com.
Also, using the wireless internet isn’t the safest way of surfing the web either, since it can be hacked if the hacker uses network sniffers. If there’s a choice, you should use WPA key on your connection. Set one up by going to your computer’s Connections, and then proceed to Your Wireless Network. From there, go to Wireless Map, and then find Your Router. Enter its Properties, and choose Device Webpage. Finally, click on the Wireless Security Settings, and then ‘WEP/WPA Key’.
Another way of protecting your devices, as well as your complete Internet connection is through the use of VPNs. VPNs are private networks that are very handy for enhancing your online security and anonymity. They use the strongest encryptions to protect your data, and they also send your data flow through secure tunnels which keep it safe and hidden from everyone else. And they can even hide your IP address and switch it with another one. Using VPNs is simple and easy, and the hardest part is choosing one. We recommend PIA, TorGuard, IPVanish and GhostVPN as the best and most reliable ones.
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Don’t share your email credentials
These are your private information, and nobody official will ever ask for them. If someone does, and they claim that you need to provide this information for any kind of services, you should immediately break any kind of connection and communication with them.
Of course, many services are going to ask for your email address, and that’s fine. But your password or any kind of other sensitive data located on the email itself is completely yours, and nobody else has any right to that data.
You might get an email that requests your username and password, and that email might even look official. Don’t fall for it, and as we’ve said, no service is ever going to ask for that. You’re most likely being contacted by a hacker, and you should stop any further communication.
Contact the company that’s being impersonated
If something like that happens to you, you should inform the company that the hacker is impersonating. They should be aware of the situation so that they might warn their users, or even take steps to stop the guilty party.
Every company offers a department for account verification, and they can provide support via phone, chat, or email at any time. It’s a good idea to change your password immediately such event occurs, simply to minimize any sort of potential risk.
Inform your email service provider as well
In case of any sort of abuse, you have the right, as well as the responsibility, to inform your email provider. They all offer some sort of mail abuse department that can be contacted and informed about such matters at any time. Use this service and help yourself, as well as others.
Choose your security questions/answers wisely
Whenever you’re making an email, there are security questions that you can choose to post, and then provide an answer that only you would know. While doing this, you should make sure that those truly are the answers that only you might know, and not something that can be easily guessed or found in a brief research.
Also, choose and answer that won’t change over time, and also one that you’ll be able to easily remember. It might be years before you need to provide an answer to one such question, and you don’t want an answer to be something pointless that you know now, but you might forget in 5-10 years.
Just be sure to provide a definitive, but still simple answer, and you should be fine. Also, you’ll have another layer of security to guard you, and that’s never a bad idea.
Conclusion
As we’ve already mentioned, emails are a foundation for any other profile that you might have on the internet. You need a profile on the majority of existing websites and the security of all of your profiles starts with a safe and secure email address. Don’t risk it, but instead play it safe, and you won’t have any problems.
