Hackers can get into your email a variety of ways but the archetypical method is cracking your password. There are other ways such as the server hack that we experienced a few months ago on one of our accounts. Still, breaking your password is the modus operandi for most email hackers.

With this in mind, here are some important points about email passwords and security:

• Your email password should be very strong. The email passwords I use are my second strongest of all 250 strong passwords in my Roboform (password manager).
• You should not use your email password anywhere else.
• If you are using a weak password, you should change it now!
• If your email provider offers it, turn on two-step verification.
• Make sure that your password recovery information is up-to-date. (Correct cell phone number, correct secondary email, etc.)

What kinds of things can hackers do if they crack your password and get into your account? Let’s look at what just happened in the last week to one of my friends (and customer).

The hacker stole his address book and sent emails to everyone in it. But, before emailing everyone, the hacker went into settings and changed the “Reply-to” email address to something similar to the real address. When those of us received the email, it appeared to come from my friend but the return email wasn’t correct. However, you had to have a sharp eye to catch that fact.

The hacker also put the fake address in a setting which would automatically forward emails to him or her that were sent to my friend. As a bonus, it appears the hacker also deleted some or all of my friend’s saved emails.

If you look at my example above, this is what happened to my friend. The hacker added a “Reply-to” address that, at first glance, appeared to be legit and he or she also added the same fake account to “Forwarding.” Naturally, we fixed all these issues but some damage was already done (like the deleted emails).

I can’t stress enough the importance of the points I listed above regarding email passwords and security. Don’t just read this post and then do nothing to protect your email. Don’t allow yourself to fall into thinking that there’s nothing in your email anyone would want. Believe me, your email contains lots of information a hacker would like to get his or her hands on!