Cyber Crime is expected to grow by 15% over the next two years.
The risk to your email address continues to grow.
Risks of viruses, spam, ransomware, cookie theft and phishing increase year by year.
Email anti-virus software provide continuing updated security programmes to stop attacks on your email address.
Although you use passwords to access your email account, hackers can gain access by inadequate security on your router.
Some signs that you have been hacked.
Your internet searches may direct you to different sites.
Pop up spams will be more frequent on your screen, sometime constantly.
You may receive a ransomware message requesting money.
You find your passwords are not working.
You may find apps and software had been installed sometimes hidden on your computer without your knowledge.
You see lots of antivirus messages on your computer.
Personal or confidential pictures or information or business data had been leaked.
Contact your bank.
Money has been removed from your bank account. If this happens contact your bank immediately and change all your passwords. They will put a hold on your account.
If you have lost money from your bank account. There may be transactional information that can be checked including items that has been shipped to a different address from the one you use, or your account may have been changed to a one click purchase format.
What do I do if my email address is hacked.
Do not delete your email account as email providers can reuse your old email address.
This can give hackers the opportunity to spam every site they find with a “Forgot my password” request to try and impersonate you.
This is called Identity Theft.
You should immediately change your passwords on all accounts that you think have been hacked. Changing your passwords are also a good habit to get into.
Scan your computer do a full sweep of your computer with your antivirus software.
It should show up any malware or malicious activity and automatically quarantine or remove any software that shouldn’t be there.
You should also manually check all you programme and apps that has recently been installed on your computer as antivirus software can sometimes miss the latest malware.
My Facebook, X, Google account has been hacked.
Tell all your friends and contacts that you have had your account hacked and not to click on anything you might have sent them.
Most people get hacked at least once in their life, but you can mitigate the situation by following the advice above. Get into the habit of changing all your passwords regularly, bit of a pain I know but worth it.
Replace Bank cards.
Also, a good idea to replace you bank cards every year or two. Your bank account no’s will stay the same, but card no’s will change stopping anyone who has stored your card details in the past for a future theft.