Nowadays, our email accounts are not just a way to stay in touch with our family and friends. Our email accounts are a repository of our sensitive information such as social security numbers, banking info, personal photos, purchase confirmations/transactions, password reminders delivered to our email accounts and much more. Can you imagine the total loss if your email password got hacked?
The motivation for hackers is to get people’s money or information for their own personal gains. We need to understand, today ignorance is not bliss, overlooking our virtual safety can put us into the real risk of reputation, money loss and/or Identity theft.
Here we have gathered a few safety measures that can help users to keep their email accounts safe and more secure.
1. Strong passwords
Create unique/ strong passwords to make it more difficult for hackers to compromise your account. It is recommended to use a combination of upper and lower case letters, numbers, special characters and use more than 8 characters.
Read more: How to Create a Strong Password
2. Do not open emails from unknown senders
Avoid opening emails received from unknown senders. These emails may infect your computer with a trojan, malware or virus. Delete such mails without opening them, and if you have opened it by mistake, ensure you don’t click any given links or open any attachments.
3. 2-Step verification
Enrolling in 2-step verification adds another layer of security to login to your account. This process usually involves the standard password login followed by a security question only you know the answer to.
4. Stick to your computer
You should avoid using PCs other than yours, because you never know if the computer you may use is safe or not. There is a possibility your password may get hacked if the PC has a virus or any malware infected. In case you use any other computer, make sure you do not submit any sensitive and confidential information such social security number, credit card details, etc.
5. Do not distribute your email address
To crack passwords, hackers first need an email address. Therefore avoid submitting your personal email address to subscribing newsletters, online queries, websites, or chat rooms. You can create another email account strictly for these services and ensure this account doesn’t have any of your personal information.
6. Be careful of Phishing tricks
Phishing attacks are made to get sensitive information like bank credentials, passwords or Usernames. Next time you surf the internet or visit trustworthy websites, if you receive any screen or pop up box requesting you to enter an email address or personal information, never give any of your details. These pop-up are created to trick innocent and unaware users to release confidential and information. Avoid clicking external links installed on these websites, if you click this, it starts a hidden download of spy software or virus on your computer.
These steps are just a few of the precautions users can take to make their email account more secure, but there are a lot more. Hackers are always working to get into accounts, keep them guessing and make their job harder by keeping your account safe.