How to protect your Gmail account from Hacking

Secure your Gmail : Intelligent computing

Last Month Google has begun the warning for the state sponsored hacking. That simply means, If Google Detects any malicious attempts to crack your password or harm the security of your Gmail account, and Google will display the warning on the top of your Gmail account when you will simply log in. That doesn’t always means that government based hacker are doing these, its more chances are there that your Gmail account is been targeted by some of the hackers. And Google suggest you to take some extra measure to prevent the hacking of your account and protecting the data that are associated with your Google Account. If you have not got any warning yet, take the following measure to ensure the security of your account.

Methods for protecting your Gmail account from hacking

Enable two step verification

In my opinion Google Two step verification is the best way to protect your Gmail account from any third party hacker or say one who has even your password.

In this method you have to go for the enabling of the two step verification on your Google account. Once you have done this Google will SMS or call you on your registered number to give you a special code to enter each time you log in to your account. That means if hacker need to log in to your account, they have to have your phone and that is almost impossible like difficult way. Learn more about two step verification here.

Layer up your password strength

This is the most controllable and most important step that people don’t bother and they simply set the password as their phone number, name or something else like anyone can guess easily. After that having dozens of online account? People often use the similar password for all or even same password, if sometime they keep different password they forgets. Follow these simple password rules.

-          If you are using the phone number, use it more than 2 phone number at alternate    position or with special combination of both.

-          Encrypt the password yourself. Yes mobile phone keypad method. Well if you want to keep your password simple, change it to numerical value by converting it on mobile keypad. Like word ‘Google’ can be converted to 466453, its more secure and only you know the original password logic and original password.

-          Use a phrase instead of word with special symbols in it, like $ instead of S;! Instead of i; 3 instead of e and all. You can make your own combination.

This practice will make your password strong even if it is small one.

Spot Phishing mails

Many time users gets the mails that masquerading like the original brand and company and formatting is so accurate that people even trust them. You can get and track the original sender of the mail by having the ‘Show original’ option from the mail and you will get the simple text that will give you even minor details like IP address, domains, location, etc. After studying all these you can easily spot the fake mails and report.

Keep updated with your software

As Google and all the software vendor recommends, you must keep your software up to date, as you know people out there works round the clock for removing any security holes on their release and as they finds they provides update to your installed software. So these can help you to be secure from the new holes as they appear.

Always Check for SSL

Whenever login to Gmail or any of the online accounts, don’t just go on page appearance, go for the URL of the page. If your URL start with Green coloured “Https://” and a lock symbol showing that your account login is secure. For more information, click on the lock there, you will see the encryption type. Because it’s common when people just logged in to Gmail and Facebook and phished many time. So stay aware. Also before clicking any link which is short can be harmful code another side. You can spot the short URL easily.

So always keep these in minds and keep changing your passwords, updating the recovery method like cell phone and Alternate E-mail ID etc. Hacking your account is not that much to worry, but recovery of

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