What To Do When Your Email Account is Compromised

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More and more I see spam coming from friends when I open my e-mail. In addition to this, people are telling me that they think their e-mail accounts have been hacked. Signs can be friends receiving messages you did not send, mail is marked read that they never saw, settings are changed, or anything else out of the ordinary. In any case, the question is the same: “What do I do?”

While many Ghacks readers may know to follow these steps, having a guide handy for others is a useful thing. I can imagine many readers are resources for friends, family, and coworkers. These steps can serve as a checklist to ensure thoroughness.

his is a guide on how to reasonably secure your e-mail account. What to do if you lose access to your account is a different problem for another article. This article assumes you still have access, but strange things (as mentioned) are going on. It will cover the three most commonly used e-mail account types: Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo Mail. While changing the settings is pretty easy, finding them can be less than obvious. Here are some screenshots to help you find the general settings page for your account.

 

Step 1 : Change Your Password

You need to do this immediately. This is akin to changing the locks on your doors. When you do not know exactly who has a key to your home, the locks are a liability. Count yourself lucky that you can get into your account. To change your password, log-in and go to Settings. Then follow the steps appropriate to your account.

• In Gmail: Mail Settings > Accounts and Imports > Change Password
• In Hotmail: More Options > Account Details (look for “Change” next to password)
• In Yahoo Mail: Mail Options > Account Information > Change your password

Step 2 : Check Your Recovery E-mail Address

Your recovery e-mail address is the one that you use to reset/regain your password. However, if it was changed, it can be used to get the password to your account. Take a look to see if it is set to another account you own. If not, change it immediately. You also may want to follow these steps on that account.

• In Gmail: Mail Settings > Accounts and Imports > Change Password Recovery Options
• In Hotmail: More Options > Account Details (look for “Remove” next to an odd e-mail)
• In Yahoo Mail: Mail Options > Account Information > Update password-reset info

Step 3 : Change Your Hints

Most people forget about this, but it is a good idea to change your hints. If the hacker knows the answer, they may be able to regain access. This usually requires the recovery e-mail address to be altered, but it is still better to change your hints. Since hints are usually used to reset passwords, they can be used to change your password.

• In Gmail: Mail Settings > Accounts and Imports > Change Password Recovery Options
• In Hotmail: More Options > Account Details (look for remove next to a question)
• In Yahoo Mail: Mail Options > Account Information > Update password-reset info

Step 4 : Check Your Forwards

Checking your forwards is going to be a tedious process, but it is important. If you only have time to skim them over, then do so but make a thorough look your next priority. Your bank account may depend on it. Your e-mail account can be set up to send letters to other e-mail accounts. Most websites are set up to send new passwords to your e-mail address. That means that an unscrupulous person could ask the site for your password, set up your account to forward it to an account they have access to, and the get into the site. That could be a bank site, a blog, FaceBook, or anything else.

• In Gmail: Mail Settings > Forwarding and POP/IMAP
• In Hotmail: More Options > Email forwarding
• In Yahoo Mail: Mail Options > POP & Forwarding (note: a premium service)

Step 5 : Change All Your Passwords on Connected Accounts

Sadly, you have to assume that your forwards are compromised. You are going to have to go through each site you used your e-mail account to sign up with and change the password and hint. You might even want to associate them with a separate account to isolate critical e-mails. Alternatively, you could just change your password and hint on sensitive sites. Your bank and any financial websites should be first. Social networking site like FaceBook and Twitter should be next.

Keep in Mind

You should always use a strong password for your accounts: one with uppercase, lowercase, numeric, and symbol characters. Ideally, you should have a different one for each account. At the very least your e-mail, financial, and social networking sites should have separate passwords. Security is not about absolutes, but about making it difficult for others to gain access to you account.

It is worth noting that each of these services has an extra security feature. You can actually set up your account to use your phone for e-mail recovery. As I have not used it, it is beyond the scope of this article, but is worth considering.

Addendum

If you have troubles logging in at all, you may want to take a look at the following guides to resolve the problem:

• Hotmail Sign In Help
• Yahoo Mail Signin, Login Help (Yahoomail)
• MSN Hotmail Sign In Troubleshooting
• Google Sign In Help, Troubleshooting
• Gmail Login

The guides aid you in password, username and account recovery.

Source: http://www.ghacks.net/2011/04/11/what-to-do-when-your-email-account-is-compromised/

Top Automation Tools to Look At

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Here are some Automation tools that you should look at. They are free and can help you different ways.

Data Visualization

It is an easy way to create reportsfrom any data.  You can easily create report layouts and import data from almost any data base system like Oracle, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Firebird, MS SQLServer, IBM DB2, Interbase, SQLite or from external files and create hundreds of documents in whatever format you want (PDF, RTF, XLS, XML). Cost: Free

The application works on a variety of OS formats:  Linux, MS WindowsXP/Vista/2003/7 ,  and Mac OS .  It supports  English, Spanish, and Polish.

[Download Link]

Do It Again

If you’ve ever wanted a task to be repeated on your computer, this program will help you do that. It allows you to make your computer automatically perform a task for you, whenever you want.  For example, if there is something that you do on your computer over and over, and you do it exactly the same way every time (such as backing up your pictures, checking web-based email for new messages, etc.), you can tell Do It Again how to perform that task (by doing it once yourself to create the new task). After that you record a task (or macro) then sit back and watch as your computer automates that task, clicking the mouse and pressing the keyboard by itself.  If it helps, this is also called macro or automation software, as it allows you to record a macro, then play it back to automate the actions of that macro. Cost: Free.

[Download Link]

Auto Mute

Control the sounds on your PC. How?  This small software utility  will make your PC silent when it’s turning on or is waking up. Solution is very easy! The sound is automatically muted when the computer is turning off or is going to suspend mode. The next system start is absolutely silent even if you forgot to turn the sound off in previous session. After that you can enable sound effects manually, using a shortcut combination. Moreover, you may use this keyboard shortcut to quickly switch the sound on and off.

Why is this program beneficial? Well around your house if you have small children trying to sleep, it won’t wake them up. If you are at work, you can control the sound there too.

[Download Link]

Source: http://www.windows7news.com/2011/04/13/top-automation-tools/

How to Remove Win 7 Anti-Spyware 2011 (Fake Anti-Virus Infections)

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If your PC is infected with the Win 7 Anti-Spyware 2011 malware or something similar, you’ve come to the right place, because we’re going to show you how to get rid of it, and free your PC from the awful clutches of this insidious malware (and many others)

Win 7 Anti-Spyware 2011 is just one of many fake antivirus applications like Antivirus Live, Advanced Virus Remover, Internet Security 2010, Security Tool, and others that hold your computer hostage until you pay their ransom money. They tell you that your PC is infected with fake viruses, and prevent you from doing anything to remove them.

This particular virus goes by a lot of names, including XP Antispyware, Win 7 Antispyware, Win 7 Internet Security 2011, Win 7 Guard, Win 7 Security, Vista Internet Security 2011, and many, many others. It’s all the same virus, but renames itself depending on your system and which strain you get infected with.

The What Now?

If you aren’t familiar with this one, it’s time to take a look at the face of an awful scam. If you are infected, scroll down to the section where we explain how to remove it.

Once a PC is infected, it’ll display this very official-looking window, which pretends to scan your PC and find things that are infected, but of course, it’s all a lie.

The really crazy thing is that it pops up a very realistic looking Action Center window, but it’s actually the virus.

Removing Rogue Fake Antivirus Infections (General Guide)

There’s a couple of steps that you can generally follow to get rid of the majority of rogue antivirus infections, and actually most malware or spyware infections of any type. Here’s the quick steps:

• Try to use the free, portable version of SUPERAntiSpyware to remove the viruses.
• If that doesn’t work, reboot your PC into safe mode with networking (use F8 right before Windows starts to load)
• Try to use the free, portable version of SUPERAntiSpyware to remove the viruses.
• Reboot your PC and go back into safe mode with networking.
• If that doesn’t work, and safe mode is blocked, try running ComboFix. Note that I’ve not yet had to resort to this, but some of our readers have.
• Install MalwareBytes and run it, doing a full system scan.
• Reboot your PC again, and run a full scan using your normal Antivirus application (we recommend Microsoft Security Essentials).
• At this point your PC is usually clean.

Those are the rules that normally work. Note that there are some malware infections that not only block safe mode, but also prevent you from doing anything at all. We’ll cover those in another article soon, so make sure to subscribe to How-To Geek for updates (top of the page).

Removing Win 7 Anti-Spyware 2011

Download a free copy of MalwareBytes, copy it to a thumb drive, and then install it on the infected PC and run through a scan. You might have better luck doing this in Safe Mode.

You may have better luck installing MalwareBytes first, if the virus will let you. In my case, it did not. When I scanned through the first time using SUPERAntiSpyware, it detected the viruses and removed the files just fine.

At this point, you should hopefully have a clean system. Make sure to install Microsoft Security Essentials, and don’t be fooled by these viruses again.

Can’t Open Any Applications After Deleting the Virus?

The next problem was that once the virus was removed, you couldn’t open anything—in fact, I still wasn’t even able to install MalwareBytes. Hopefully you have better luck.

Why couldn’t I open anything? Because the virus had rewritten the registry to force all applications to open the virus instead—which meant you couldn’t even open the registry editor to fix the problem. This problem might have been avoided had I properly completed the scan, but I interrupted it before it was done.

On a normal PC, there’s a registry key under HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT that specifies what happens when you double-click on an executable file (*.exe) – but on a virus-infected system, this value is rewritten with the virus executable. That’s how it prevents you from opening anything.

To fix the problem, I exported a clean registry file from another PC, and did a little extra hacking to it, and problem solved! All you have to do is download, extract, copy the .reg file to the infected PC, and double-click it to add the information into the registry.

Download the Fixing Malware Appliction Won’t Open Registry Hack

Source: http://www.howtogeek.com/57837/how-to-remove-win-7-anti-spyware-2011-fake-anti-malware-infections/