Tips To Protect Your Email Account From Hackers

This is a guest post by Ilya Elbert.

Accessing someone’s email account without her or his permission is technically termed as email hacking. Email hacking is a crime and is categorized under cyber crime. With the impending boon of internet the cases of cyber crime are also increasing rapidly. The hackers use the technology in wrong way and hack the email accounts of others.

The hackers can hack the email account and may harm you in many ways. They can send objectionable content to anyone from your email id; they can access your social networking website and harm your public image. The hackers can even hack your passwords and transact from your bank account.

The common mistake that people often do is to keep the same password for their various accounts. This help the hackers access all their accounts.


The hackers use various methods to hack your password so as to access your mail account or to get your personal information. They can also steal your property, access the copyright data or withdraw the money from your online bank account. Though there are various security points developed by the programmers to avoid the hacking but the hackers are smart enough to drill the security and crack the hidden passwords.

Fortunately we have the computer security option which may avoid your email hacking. Below are a few good and effective tips to save your email from the hackers:

• Be attentive while logging in to your email account: Before you login in any website check whether the URL is authenticated or not. Hackers usually create the fake login pages to steal your passwords.
• Do not use mail account at public place: Unless it is very urgent avoid using the email account in public places or a public computer. You never know the person sitting next to you might be looking at your password to steal it. Public computers are not safe to open your email account. The computer owner might have some spyware installed in his machine to store your passwords.
• Always have secondary email account: While creating an email account the server always prompt to give a secondary email id which often people ignore. This secondary email account is useful to login from the public computers. When you are on the go, forward all the important mails from your original account to the secondary email account. Your main email account would remain uncompromised even if hackers crack your password.
• Do check the IP in regular intervals of the last login: Gmail offers this amazing feature using which you can check the IPL of your login. Gmail shows the last login IP on left corner of your inbox. In case you find the IP suspicious change your password immediately.
• Check for bad filters: Email services provide the custom filters, keep checking the filters and if you find any unknown sender be alert.
• Avoid clicking the suspicious links: The hackers usually send the suspicious links hidden behind some attractive text. If you click these links you are actually handling your computer to the hackers. The hacking link could also be hidden in any kind of image. If you have got such links or any special downloadable links from your friends, confirm it before downloading it to your computer system.
• Set a strong password: However the email services show the vulnerability of your password but sometimes the password shown strong by them might not actually be strong. To be very secure, select an alphanumeric password. Use special characters to make your passwords extra strong.

In a nutshell you need to be careful and watchful if you do not want the hackers to crack your password. It is always advised to use the email services requiring https:// to connect.

About the author:

Ilya Elbert writes for several IT Services NYC and PC Repair NYC corporations.

How To Block Unwanted Emails?

For Gmail:

• Login to your account.
• At the top-right corner, click on Settings.
• Under Settings, click on Filters.
• You’ll now see an option “Create a new filter“, click on it.
• Now in the From field enter the email address from which you do not want to receive emails.

For e.g. you may enter example@gmail .com in the From field to block all incoming emails from this address. However if you want to block the whole domain then use the following syntax: *@abc.com. Now all the incoming emails from the domain abc.com will be blocked.

• Click on Next Step, select the action you’d like to take on the blocked emails. You may select the option Delete it so that the blocked email is moved to trash. To unblock the email, all you need to do is just delete the filter that you’ve created.

For Yahoo:

• Login to your account.
• At the top-right corner, click on Options.
• A drop down menu appears, now click on More options.
• In the left panel select the option Filters and click on create or edit filters.
• Now click on Add.
• In the next screen, give a name to your filter and in the From header field enter the email address that you want to block.

Fox e.g. example@gmail.com or if you want to block an entire domain then just enter @xyz.com. Dont enter *@xyz.com. Select the option Move the message to: Trash and click on Save Changes.

For Hotmail:

• Login to your account.
• At the top-right corner, click on Options.
• A drop down menu appears, now click on More options.
• Click on Safe and blocked senders link under Junk e-mail.
• Now click on Blocked senders.
• Type in the email address that you want to block under blocked e-mail address or domain field.

For e.g. enter example@yahoo.com to block the individual email address or just enter abc.com to block the entire domain.

How To Trace An Email?

Tracing email is the well known task of a hacker. If your learning hacking, then this skill must be in yourself. So keep reading this post for enhancing your knowledge.

Coming back to the post, we can trace Email using its header, as each email provider contains header.

1. In Gmail:

• Click on down arrow near to Reply & click on Show original.

2. In Yahoo:

• Go to Actions> Full Headers
• Header Field consists of:
  
  
  • From: Email Address where the Email has come from.
  • To: Email Address of the destination.
  • Subject: Subject of the Email
  • Date: The Local Time of the server when the message was sent.
  • Bcc: Blind Carbon Copy
  • Cc: Carbon copy
  • Content-Type: Information about how the message has to be displayed, usually a MIME type
  • n-Reply-To: Message-ID of the message that this is a reply to.
  • Received: Tracking information generated by mail servers that have previously handled a message
  • References: Message-ID of the message that this is a reply to, and the message-id of this message
  • Reply-To: Address that should be used to reply to the sender.

Locate the IP address under Received: & then go to IP2Location for finding the address of the sender. In yahoo you can check it under X-Originating-IP.

How To Send Fake Emails?

So are you keen about sending fake emails to your newbie friends who is just new in internet or don't know what happens actually? Well there are mainly two methods for sending fake emails:

• Sending Fake Email using Open Relay Server
• Sending Fake Email using Web Scripts

Sending Fake Email using Open Relay Server

An open mail relay is a SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) server configured in such a way that it allows anyone on the Internet to send Email through it, not just mail destined to or originating from known users. An attacker can connect the Open Relay Server via Telnet and instruct the server to send the Email. It requires no password to send the Email.

Sending Fake Email using Web Scripts

Web languages such as PHP and ASP contain the mail sending functions which can be used to send Emails by programming Fake headers i.e. From: To: Subject: There are so many websites available on the Internet which already contains these mail sending scripts. Most of them provide the free service, Some of them are:

• Fakesend.com
• Anonymailer.net
• Deadfake.com
• Fakemailer.net
• Fakemailer.info