Gmail Account Hacked? Tips to Check, Recover & Protect Your Google ID

Is your Gmail account Hacked? Is your Gmail contacts receiving suspicious messages from your Gmail email address? Have your Gmail and/or mail gone all of a sudden? Have you received a warning about suspicious activity from your Gmail account? Well, all these are the signs of an hacked account – your gmail account compromised. Don’t be so sad, this Google account recovery guide will help you to recover your hacked Gmail account.

Time to time Google reminds users to review their account’s updated security details and help them to protect their account from being hacked. Not only this 2-step verification is also a great feature provided by the Google to add an extra layer of security to your account.

An extra layer of security – with 2-step verification, you’ll protect your Google account with both your phone number & password.

However the best practice to secure an account is always using of a strong password that must be a combination of alphabets (upper & lower) , special characters (symbols) and numbers. With 2-step verification, an strong password and updated information, it becomes too harder for a hacker to get access into your Google account.

Always remember to never ever share your login credentials to anyone if that is a Google account or any other. Normally you will never realize that your Gmail account compromised because Gmail is a most popular email client and it is being frequently targeted by hackers.

Check If Your Gmail Account Compromised

Go through the below steps and if you find any suspicious activity on your account, immediately change your details until it become to too late.

Here are some quick tips which you can use to monitor your Google account whether your Gmail account compromised or not. Let’s have a look:

Check last account activity Logs

Got to Last account activity page, in case you are getting warning messages about suspicious activities from your account. Last account activity can show you information about recent activities in your mails including login locations, IP, methods and time.

You can also check a complete list account activities directly from your Gmail web email client. Login to your Gmail account, go to bottom of the emails and click on details under “Last account activity: xyz minutes ago” (right side of the page bottom).

Here you can see when and where your account was last accessed. It will give an lump-sum idea whether your Gmail account compromised or being used by someone.

Check Email Forwarding Details

Gmail email forwarding is a feature that can automatically forward incoming emails to another email address. Any greedy person can forward all your new emails or some emails on their own accounts.

Thus this feature is not widely used or unknown by the users, hence people not aware that someone else is also reading their emails.

So look upon the Forward and POP/IMAP settings of your Gmail account and confirm if your Gmail account compromised (make sure no email is being forwarded to any other email address).

Check POP and IMAP settings

Gmail POP and IMAP feature allow users to access emails using third party email apps. Using any of these protocols, anyone can easily configure third party email client (if they get access to your Gmail password) to send and receive emails from your account.

So make sure the POP or/and IMAP feature is disabled, if you’re not using it. Any already configured email client will stop working as soon as you disable this feature.

If you believe that your Gmail contacts or/and emails are missing, you can try missing messages troubleshooter to find emails, contacts and to check your Gmail account settings.

What Next If Your Google Account Is Hacked?

If your Gmail account password has changed by someone and you’re trying to sign in with your old password, then Google would notify you that Your password was changed XYZ days/hours ago (it clearly shows the duration of changed password in months, day or hours).

And, when you try to reset your Gmail password, you found that all recovery options have changed. It means that your Gmail account compromised or you are a victim of a hacked Gmail account.

Also see: How to Hack a Computer Password using Pendrive.

Now its time to recover your Gmail account without wasting time. You can also get your account back, even if hacker has changed all security or recovery options.

However to verify your identity, you’ll need to answer a set of questions related to your account. Your answer will help Google to ensure that you’re the actual owner of that account, then only you’ll get access to your account.

To quickly get back your hacked Gmail account, you’ll need to remember or get ready with the following details.

• What was the last password you remember?
• An alternate email address. It’ll be use to contact you if necessary (Required).
• Date when you was last logged in to your Gmail account (Required).
• Date when you did create your Google Account (Required)?
• Email addresses of up to five frequently emailed contacts.
• Name of up to four labels.
• What was the first recovery email address you remember?
• Details of other Google products that you were using like Android, Calendar, Gmail, Hangouts (approx. month and year).

Since Google’s automatic account recovery tool ask you multiple questions to verify your account, you will need to provide most approximate inputs as possible. As soon as you provide much accurate information, the system will take you to the page where you can easily reset hacked Gmail password of your account.

How to Recover A Hacked GMail Account?

If you’re not able to sign in to your Google account, your login credentials like password and security options needs to be changed.

To recover your account, go to Google account recovery page and follow the below instructions.

1. Select option I don’t know my password, enter your Gmail/Google account email ID and click on Continue.
2. In this page, you will need to enter the last password you remember and click Continue.
3. Now to reset your Gmail password, you will need to receive a verification code on your registered mobile number either by a text message (SMS) or an automated phone call.
4. Once you receive the code, you can use that code to reset your Gmail account password in the further steps in the process. If you found that the phone number is not yours, you can click on I can’t access my phone button.
5. Next step will ask you to confirm your access to the recovery email ID. If you see that the saved email ID is your, you can click on Continue or else click on the link “Verify your identity“.
6. As you clicked on Verify your identity, next Google will start asking you some questions about your account (see above set of questions).
7. Provide the information about your account as accurate as possible. If the information you have provided matches with your account details, you may get back your hacked account.

If all information provided by you doesn’t match, Google will instantly notify you that the information you’ve provided doesn’t match the information on the account. But you can try the process again with the more accurate information.

Note:  Never skip any question while verifying your account, just input the best guess. If you’re not confirm about the date or year, you can take help with your trusted friends you mostly connected online.

Protect Your Google Account From Being Hacked

If you have successfully recovered your Google account, go through the simple steps in the security checklist to protect your Google account from hackers.

Keep in mind to always create a strong password with the combination of Alphabets, numbers and symbols. A strong password should be of minimum length of 8 characters and it helps a lot to secure gmail account.

Recommended for you: How to Block a Website on Your Computer, Phone & Network.

Opt for login notifications from an unknown devices or computer. It’ll be the much better, if you enable 2-steps verification to provide extra layer of security to your Google account.

Note: Never share your account details and answers of the above questions with anyone even he/she is your best friend or beloved because your near and dear one may snatch your account. If you do Google to know how to hack google or gmail account password, you will find so many tutorials to hack gmail password. But beware of that phishing tricks because most of the hacking tricks designs to hack the users personal details. Means if you will use that tricks or apps to hack someone, first you will be the victim of the trick or app owner.

If you ever feel that you Gmail account compromised or hacked, immediately change your account password and check updated security details like security question, password recovery email, and registered phone number, etc.

Hope this guide to check, recover and protect Google account is helping you. Share how your Gmail account compromised or hacked via comment below. If you have query regarding Gmail account recovery, you can ask with us. We will do our best to get back your account.