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How to Read Gmail if Email Address Does Not End in Gmail

I recall someone I know has hacked my Gmail account. What should I do? Valeria

This is a relatively common question. Other recent examples include "Someone is using my Gmail business relationship to steal my information on a game. How practice I get rid of him?" from Rodimus Ghost, and "My daughter is using my Gmail account. How do I stop her?" I don't recall getting these queries most other electronic mail services.

My usual response is: "How do you lot know?"

There might be emails in the Sent Mail binder that you didn't write, though hackers can comprehend their tracks by deleting copies of sent emails. Even so, incoming emails are not an indicator. I've had emails from Instagram, GoCompare, Barclaycard Business, Apple, Prattville YMCA and many other organisations where people have entered my Gmail address, probably by fault. It doesn't mean they accept accessed my business relationship.

The all-time style to tell if someone else has used our account is to scroll downwardly the Gmail inbox and look for "Concluding account activity" in the bottom right. Clicking on Details produces a dainty table that shows how someone accessed the account (browser, mobile, POP3 etc), their IP address, and the date and time. You should recognise any sessions that aren't yours.

In fact, Gmail will, by default, notify yous of any unusual activity. You may go an warning if you log on with a new device or from a different country. These alerts can be annoying but they increase your security. Don't plow them off.

You lot can too cheque the Recently used devices page, which lists all the PCs, phones and tablets used in the previous 28 days. Again, information technology should exist obvious if whatever of them are not yours.

Double-bank check Settings

There are simple means to read someone else's emails without leaving obvious traces. These are controlled from Gmail'due south Settings, which you tin can find by clicking the cogwheel in the tiptop correct.

On the Settings page, click Accounts and Import and become to the penultimate entry: "Grant admission to your business relationship". Someone could click "Add together an email account", enter another Gmail address, and access your emails from that business relationship. They tin can keep these emails marked equally Unread fifty-fifty if they've read them.

Next, click Forwarding and Pop/IMAP and review the top section on postal service forwarding.

Email services allow users to forward all incoming emails to some other electronic mail address, and I think everyone should practice this. I accept Gmail forrard all my emails to my account at Microsoft's Outlook.com. As a event, I can yet read and reply to emails even if Gmail is inaccessible. Further, if Gmail locked me out, I'd still have copies of emails going back to April 2004.

gmail
Locked out of your account? All might non be lost. Photograph: Graham Turner/The Guardian

So, if you can access someone'southward mailbox, you can set up post forwarding to an address that yous control, and they'll probably never detect. Make sure nobody has done that to y'all.

If you only read Gmail in a web browser, you could also disable the POP and IMAP access features. This would provide a small-scale increase in security, but I don't recommend it. In fact, at that place are advantages to using a PC email program such as Microsoft Outlook, Thunderbird or eM Client to collect Gmail using the IMAP protocol. These programs have more features than the web version of Gmail, and they store emails on your PC and then that you tin can easily access them offline. IMAP leaves the original emails online, and so you tin yet access them using different devices. (Yes, you tin as well install "Gmail Offline" via the Offline tab.)

Remember to save whatever changes earlier switching tabs.

Countersign security

Once you are sure your mailbox is not beingness hacked, change your password to keep other people out.

In Gmail, go back to Accounts and Import and click "Change password".

Cull a stiff password or passphrase that includes numbers and upper-example characters. Gmail requires at least eight characters, but aim for 12 or 16 or even more than. Longer is better. Information technology won't exist random, unless yous utilize a password director, but avoid family unit names, names of pets, birthdays, sports teams and other obvious elements.

For convenience, your browser or email program can think your countersign. If you lot permit this, your electronic mail is only as secure as your PC. Anyone who can access your PC tin access your e-mail.

Nowadays, of course, the simplest way to hack someone's e-mail is to employ a phishing assault. In this example, someone sends you a link in an electronic mail that pretends to come from Google. Clicking the link opens a browser tab where "Google" asks you to log in with your e-mail address and password. The assailant harvests the results.

If you lot're going to leave your PC unattended or autumn for a phishing set on, it doesn't matter how strong your password is.

Do the two-step

If someone can access your Gmail business relationship, they can change your password and lock you out. You can foreclose this by using "two-step verification". With Gmail, this commonly means Google will text a code to your mobile telephone. This is fine until y'all don't have a signal or lose your phone. Gmail therefore asks for a redundancy phone number. (Landlines work: you get a voice bulletin.) Gmail also allows y'all to print out a pocket-sized set up of verification numbers that you can utilise when travelling.

Google's two-step notification on Android
Google's two-step notification on Android Photo: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian

Google provides an alternative to SMS in the form of Google Authenticator, a gratis app for Google Android devices and Apple iPhones and iPads.

You tin can too simplify two-stride verification slightly by using "application specific passwords". For example, if you lot admission Gmail via a smartphone app or an e-mail client that can't handle two-step verification, you can request a separate countersign for each electronic mail program on each device. It simply has to exist entered in one case.

To use these extra security features in Gmail, become to Accounts and Import, click "Other Google Account settings" and then "Sign-in & security". This provides admission to password changes, 2-step verification, and account recovery options.

Account recovery

What if your password stops working and you tin't get into Gmail? The traditional approach to account recovery is to ask for some personal information, such as your female parent's maiden name. This enabled people to hack email accounts by using data gleaned from social media accounts. You can prevent this past using random letters or something obscurely incorrect – "Mother'due south maiden proper noun: Quetzalcoatl" – but then y'all take to retrieve the answers.

Google'southward recovery options include a telephone number, some other email address and a security question. It also likes to ask when the account was opened and when you final used information technology.

You may be able to detect out when you created your Gmail business relationship by searching for (in my case) before: 2004/04/fifteen, or any date in YYYY/MM/DD order. That won't work if you deleted your welcome bulletin, simply vary the date to notice the oldest message you tin can.

Account recovery is the but manner to become your Gmail back if y'all forget your countersign or a hacker changes information technology. Merely it doesn't always work, and you may be told that "You weren't signed in because Google couldn't confirm that xxxxxxxx@gmail.com belongs to you."

And so – as another reader, Paul, found earlier this yr – you lot end up in a "failed online recovery loop. No contact centre. No online chat. No contact details at all." It looks as if in that location's nothing you can do except open a new account, change all your online passwords and electronic mail addresses, and hope zippo bad happens.

Take yous got a question? Email information technology to Inquire.Jack@theguardian.com

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Source: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/askjack/2017/jul/27/how-can-i-stop-someone-else-from-using-my-gmail-account-security

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