Hacking Gmail

How to protect email account getting hacked

“My Email account is hacked” or ” Some hacker has hacked my email account“, did these quotes sound familiar to you Guys, if not then soon gonna be if you are not aware of latest techniques used by hackers to hack into your email accounts. After reading such comments there are two things that always come to my mind, either hacking email account is to easy for hackers or protecting email account for getting hacked is too difficult. And after thinking about both above points, i starts laughing because both are true for Hackers and both are false for unaware users.

Note: If a Hacker wants to hack you Email or system, he will hack it. The only thing you can do is, just make it harder for him to do the same.

Friends, after spending my precious 5 years in field of Hacking and Cyber security, i reached a very simple conclusion. Email accounts can only be hacked by means of Social Engineering technique, and whoever says that he can hack email account using some other technique then friends he is a liar.

Hack Email account passwords,protect email accounts

Protect Email account from getting hacked

Now what all topics are covered in Social Engineering Technique:

1. Phishing or fake page login technique.

2. Spreading Keyloggers in form of cracks, keygens, or hack tools(RAT’s , keyloggers, etc).

3. Shouldering passwords.

4. Guessing Weak Passwords.

5. Compromising Accounts with Friends or team mates

6. Using Accounts from Cyber cafe’s or other insecure places like friends PC or college PC’s.

So friends let’s start from one by one, how you all can protect yourself from hackers.

1. Phishing or Fake Pages Login Technique

In this technique, what hacker does is that, he makes a local(fake) copy of original website which looks absolutely similar to original one and attaches his PHP action scripts to record the passwords and then uploads that local copy to some free web hosting server. After uploading, he shares the links with friends or victims by three different ways:

a. By Sending Emails : Emails can be spoofed and looks like they are coming from genuine sources like Gmail Support or Yahoo Support etc or Simply from your most trusted friends.

Now which type of emails you should not open:

Emails asking for account verification: These emails ask for you email account username or passwords to verify your details.
Emails showing Prize Money or lotteries: Nowadays, we all receive a lot of email messages like “You have Won Prize Money or Lottery of so and so amount. These emails usually ask your name, age occupation, mobile number, sometimes credit card details. And when you provide all these information they ask you to verify your Mobile number. They usually say you will receive one unique verification code on your mobile and ask you to enter that verification code in some unknown website. Note: This is mobile phone verification loophole of all Email services. They all sent verification in below format: ” Your Google Verification Code is 123456 or Your Yahoo verification code is 123456 or Your Hotmail verification code is 123456″. Means these services doesn’t mention that “your Gmail or Yahoo or Hotmail password reset code is 123456” so user is easily get fooled by such offers and become the prey to hackers.
Emails from unsolicited or unknown sources: Never open the emails which comes from unknown sources.
Never access any social networking website link from your email as it can be a Phish Page link.

Some useful and handy guidelines to identify Phish Pages:

1. Always check the URL in the address bar ( both source and destination). Never login in the URL which has website URL other than the original one.

2. Most important: Always use web security toolbar(avg,avira or crawler etc), most of them are available for free. They will detect the fake pages and warn you from opening them.

b. Using Chat services

Never open the links that are being posted in chat rooms, there are lots of Ajax and java scripts available in market that can retrieve all your stored passwords from your web browser.

c. Sharing Content on some website and that website is asking for registration with is followed by email verification. Hackers share their links on famous forums or torrents, when user open these link either of the above two things happen or a key logger or RAT is attached with them that will record you email address and password and send the information to hackers email account or FTP mail.

2. Spreading Keyloggers in form of cracks, keygens, or hack tools(RAT’s , keyloggers, etc).

This is the most used hacking technique used by almost every hacker to hack the users email accounts. In this technique, hackers attach their keylogger or RAT servers with the crack or keygen or patch or hack tools and whenever user executes that it got installed automatically.

In this case hackers use the below loophole: Whenever you open a keygen or patch or crack or hack tool, your antivirus shows you are warning message but users always ignore these as hackers or cracks provider has already instructed the users that turn off the antivirus before running patch or keygen.

So friends 4 things to note here:

a. Never use cracked or patched software’s as they already contains Trojan’s which are controlled on basis of timestamp.

Solution: Look for any freeware providing the same features. If you request i will give you the list for freeware alternatives for all paid software’s.

b. Never turn off your antiviruses or anti-spywares or web security toolbar.

c. Regularly update your antivirus and anti spyware programs.

d. If you wanna try any hacking software or hack tool, then always use sandbox browser or use Deep Freeze.

3. Shouldering passwords

Seeing or watching the user, while he/she is typing his password is called shouldering. Most of time we types our passwords in front of our friends or colleagues. Nowadays what usually friends or classmates do is that, they stand in back of you and keep a eye on you while you are typing passwords. This technique is also used at ATM machines, thieves or malicious people watch people while they were entering the ATM pin and then misuse that online.

Solution: Always take care that nobody is watching you while you are typing passwords. If not possible to do so try to avoid logging into your accounts when your friends are near you.

Note: Never store passwords in your web browsers. Otherwise, friends like me ask you to bring water for me and when you go out, i will see you all saved passwords :P..

4. Guessing Weak Passwords

Its not a new thing, i have told people more than hundreds of time not to use weak or very common passwords but they will never learn. Few basic passwords that unaware or novice IT people use:

a. 6 to 8 consecutive character on the keyboard or alphabets like qwerty, 1234567, abcdefgh etc.

b. Atleast 30% of people keep their current or previous mobile numbers as their passwords.

c. More than 10% keep their girlfriend name or her mobile number as password.

d. But nowadays password policy are quite good, so novice people also became smart as most of websites ask atleast one Capital letter, one number and one special character in password. Now friends, guess what will be their passwords:

1. Suppose its december then their password will be like: Dec@2011 or Dec123! or Dec2011@.

2. How can they forget keyboards consequite keys like qwert123!, qwerty123$, abc123! etc.

3. Offcourse, none can forget his girlfriend name : girlfrindfirstname123! or more smart people GFNAME1!.

Hahaha…. thats really foolish.

Some tips for strong passwords:

1. Always keep your password atleast 8 chars long.

2. Use special characters and number and small n upper case combination in your password.

3. Verify your mobile numbers if available.

4. Keep changing your passwords at-least once a month.

5. Compromising Accounts with Friends or team mates

Its one of the most common problem with team mates and friends. “Today i am not coming to office or college, please use my login ID and password and forward the details or some files” or “Your friend went to your home and suppose you are away from your house, now what you will do, hey use my username and password and take your files or documents”. What the hell is this? You call yourself professional, and every time you yourself violating the password and account policy norms.

Never share your account information with anyone. People like me are very dangerous, if you share your pass with me then you are done :P..

Solution: Never tell your account information to anyone. If its urgent, you can share it but you need to change your details as soon as possible.

6. Using Accounts from Cyber cafe’s or other insecure places like friends PC or college PC’s.

Most of cyber cafe’s or college computers have keyloggers or rats installed on them. Whenever you login into your account through cybercafe, none can give you assurance that your account is safe or hacked. So always play it safe. If you login into your account through cyber cafe’s, always change them as soon as possible.

Now friends, if you follow all the above steps told by me, then your account can never be hacked and for sure you will never get a chance to say “My EMail account is hacked” or “Someone has hacked my email”.

So play safe to live n enjoy safe. That’s all for today, hope you all have enjoyed my tutorial on how to protect your email account from getting hacked.

If you have any queries ask me in form of comments.

How to delete spam messages automatically

Email and spams are two brother’s from same mailing service, one is good and other is bad or simply waste (and some times dangerous too). For your safety what Gmail and other good mailing services do, they automatically classify the emails as spams which has came from unknown source or have malware links or content. But these are still in your email storage which sometimes can be dangerous as nowadays hackers sends bot-nets through email spams which trigger the bot attack or sometimes DDOS attack and your machine becomes one of the peer in their network which help them to boost their DDOS attack. Because of this reason, all email services advice its users, not to open unsolicited emails (emails received from unknown email address) and delete the spam emails on regular basis. But i know, none of us care of spam emails and even never deletes these emails.
For lazy peoples like me i come up with my new post, how to delete spam emails without any effort just requires one minute configuration and then spam emails will get deleted automatically. So lets learn how to delete spam emails automatically in Gmail.

Steps to delete spam email in Gmail automatically:

1. Sign in your Gmail account.
2. Select the Create a Filter as shown below:

delete spam email automatically, create filter

Select create filter

3. When you click on create filter, a frame will open for creating a filter in Gmail. Now enter the text exactly as show below:

Enter the details as shown

4. Now a warning pop up will come as shown below, just click on OK.

Click on OK to add exception

5. Now a new frame will pop up for choosing the action for such emails, just select skip the inbox and delete it ones as shown below:

Select the action delete to delete spam emails

Create actions to filter spam emails

6. That’s all my friends. Now you need not to take care about spams, it will be emptied automatically.

Note: If you send the emails from inbox to spam those will not be filtered using this method.

I hope you all like this….If you have any queries or doubts ask me in form of comments.

If you like it then please have your comment….

How to detect unusual activity in Gmail account

Hello friends, do you think or suspect your email account has been hacked or somebody else is using your account? Do you suspect that your Email account is under attack? Is email account secured enough that it cannot be hacked? Do you want to make your email account 100% hack proof? If Yes, then this article is for you. So friends read on..

Sometimes our email account has been hacked and we are not aware of that. Someone else i.e. some hacker is accessing your account and might be misusing it. But since we are not aware of that and we still think that our account and its privacy is safe but some third person is using it and accessing our private information and details. Now How you will detect that your account is under attack that How to find unauthorized activity in your email account. Here are few tips.

These are some signs of Unauthorized activity in Your email account:

1. Your new emails are marked as Read even if you’ve not read them.

2. Your emails are moved to Trash or even permanently deleted without your notice.

3. Your emails are being forwarded to a third party email address (check your settings then go to forwarding).

4. Your secondary email address is changed.

5. Phone Information is changed.

If you come across any of the above activities on your email account, then it is a clear indication that your email account is hacked.

There are some additional security features that Gmail provide its users for the Security and safety o your account.

Gmail provides an additional security feature to protect your email account through the means of IP address logging. That is, Gmail records your IP address every time you login to your Gmail account. So, if a third party gets access to your account then even his/her IP is also recorded. To see a list of recorded IP address, scroll down to the bottom of your Gmail account and you’ll see something like this.

You can see from the above figure that Gmail shows the IP address of last login (last account activity). You can click on Details to see the IP address of your last 5 activities. If you find that the IP listed in the logs doesn’t belong to you, then you can suspect unauthorized activity.

Steps to stop unauthorized activity on your email account

1. Verify you mobile phone, so that if your account is somehow got hacked then it will be easier to recover your email password.
2. If you suspect that your account is already hacked then these are the recommended things that you should perform.
a. Change your Password
b. Change your security question.
c. Remove any third party email address (if any) to which your account is set to forward emails.
d. Make sure that you can access the email account of your secondary email address.
e. Also change you secondary email password and security question.

This will help you to stop all the illegal activity in your account. But there are several peoples who have asked me that their account is hacked or they forgot the password . Now if your account is already hacked means you are not been able to access your account then wait for my next post in which i will explain how to recover hacked email accounts or locked accounts.

I hope you all like my post. If you like my posts please comment on it.
IF YOU HAVE ANY QUERIES ASK ME !