What to do if your email account has been hacked
Updated 11/13/2024:
Over the years we’ve helped lots of clients who’ve had their email account hacked – typically a Yahoo, Hotmail or AOL account. They usually first notice the problem when they are contacted by someone in their email contacts about unusual requests for money or a gift card. Other signs that an email account has been hacked include:
- Lots of emails from “mailer-daemon” in a short period of time
- No new email in the Inbox, and being filtered to the Trash or Archive folder
- Some or all previous email have been deleted
- All contacts have been deleted
- “Reply-to” address changed
- All messages being forwarded to a different address
- Email signature added or changed
- The language changed to something other than English
When attempting to login to their email some have discovered that their password has been changed and they are unable to access their account.
If your Yahoo account has been compromised, below are some helpful links:
If your AT&T Mail account has been hacked:
If you’re still unable to access your account after following instructions in the resources above, you can call Yahoo at 866-562-7219 or AT&T at 800-288-2020.
To help prevent future hacking of your email account you need to change your email password to something that is secure and different from any other password. See How to protect your internet accounts from being hacked.
It’s important that you DO NOT use your email account to send messages until you are absolutely sure that the hacker no longer has access to the account, all changes that were made are reversed, and two-factor authentication is enabled on the account to prevent future unauthorized access. If you need professional help with getting your email account back and everything fixed, give us a call.
Also see:
- How to change your email password – Computer Techs
- Email or social media hacked? Here’s what to do – FTC
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January 8th, 2013 at 9:45 pm
I can not find “My Profile” to locate the Set Personal Password section. When I took my laptop in last year for a tuneup, my toolbar was practically gone. I have tried to find it, but no luck. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks for this site, I had found it awhile back, but still had the same problem of not finding the “My Profile” to get into the Set Personal Password section. Thanks….but, still need help. Philip Alaniz
January 9th, 2013 at 12:29 am
I’ve noticed on several occasions that the att.com website does not always display the drop-down menus/toolbars when using the Internet Explorer web browser. Try going to att.com using an alternative web browser such as Google Chrome or Firefox, and let me know if that worked.