If you’re worried about email security, here is a step by step guide to help you check and determine if your Gmail account has been hacked or compromised in any way.
Step 1: Find the ‘Last Account Activity’ Section Your Inbox
At the bottom of your Gmail inbox there is a ‘Last Account Activity’ section. Click on ‘details’ to launch the full blown monitor.
Step 2: See who has accessed your Gmail account recently
Next, what you’ll see is a table of the most recent activity from your Gmail account. It shows you
- How it was accessed (Browser/mobile etc)
- Where exactly the IP address is (So you can do some further digging)
- When it was accessed
Step 3: Understand the IP addresses – Has your Gmail really been hacked?
If you see IP addresses from different countries, don’t be too quick to panic. If you use any 3rd party services which hook-up to your Gmail account, they will almost certainly show up in your activity log. To do you own investigation, you can use DomainTools to identify the IP address. This will help you differentiate normal activity and your Gmail account being hacked.
Step 4: Understand the alerts – Google’s way of highlighting suspicious activity
Google will also do it’s fair share of monitoring, and will also alert you if it sees suspicious activity both in your inbox, as well as your recent activity log. When this happens, and the IP addresses look suspicious, it is advisable to play it safe, assume your Gmail account has been hacked, and change your passwords immediately.
Step 5: Sign Out All Other Sessions – If you forgot to sign out on a public computer
If you are worried you did not not sign out of a public computer, you can ‘sign out all other sessions’. This won’t fix any hacked Gmail accounts, but it will resolve any careless mistakes. This is also useful if you happen to lose your mobile phone and you want to ensure your email is not read by others.
Step 6: What to do if your Gmail account has really been hacked
The first thing you do is change both your password and security question right away. Then make sure your new choices are very secure. Google themselves have some really good tips . For example in the case of security questions:
- Choose a question only you know the answer to – make sure the question isn’t associated with your password.
- Pick a question that can’t be answered through research (for example, avoid your mother’s maiden name, your birth date, your first or last name, your social security number, your phone number, your pet’s name, etc.).
- Make sure your answer is memorable, but not easy to guess. Use an answer that is a complete sentence for even more security.
So there you have it. A step-by-step guide on fully understanding Gmail’s account activity log, and how to check if your Gmail account has been hacked :)
ok!!
noted!
Nice guide, thanks.
It may help users who get hacked to provide other related security checks, like checking for keyloggers, firewalls etc since there are people still out there who use IE6 and are clueless about security, for any emails period.
ONE CRITICAL PART YOU FORGOT! – Check your filters! We were hacked and the hacker put in a filter to auto forward all e-mails to some yahoo account, so when we went to change our passwords for other sites he was getting our password reset e-mails.
You should really add to check all filters to make sure no forwarding was set up.
There is no “Last Account Activity” section at the bottom of my Gmail inbox.
Nice guide, thanks.
I will be doing this right now, thanks!
Very useful, when i like on details as mentioned in your post I was shocked to see how it happened. There were a few tries to access my gmail account from few countries. thanks for this prevention tip.
Thanks guys for all your support :)
@Nopes: try loading gmail in another browser
@pitseh: remember to do a Whois on the IP address… It may be safe authorized parties who are accessing your gmail. Eg. Most of my 3rd party services which hook up to gmail use the amazon cloud service…
Thank you for this! Very helpful.
I didn’t know this.
Very useful
No. 1 symtom of your Gmail account being hacked: Your user-name and password doesn’t work. Not sure how any of the above helps in that situation.
Ah!!! at last I found what I was looking for. Sometimes it takes so much effort to find even tiny useful piece of information. Nice post. Thanks
Great! Thanks for sharing.
Is it possible to have your gmail hacked and then someone sign you up to adult dating sites with your information? Because this happened to me I hadn’t use my gmail in about two years and I recently checked it and it had all these messages from adult dating sites and the only ones that were opened were from a year ago, which were the ones that included usernames and passwords. Sometimes these people don’t know who their screwing, I’m married and in the military, this could of ruined my life.
@Shane looks like simple spam.. Unlikely they would sign u up for this, unless it was an inside job
Thanks for the tip! Very helpful.
My GMail account was accessed a few months back from somewhere in US as shown by GMail. But, thanks to Google’s way of showing suspicious activities, I became aware of it and changed my password and security questions.
thats all good…but i cant even sighn into my gmail my password has been changed its like i didnt even have a gmail account to start with how do i sighn in to check if ive been hacked
My gmail has been hacked today and send spam mail to call me contact. I am really feeling bad.