Web Talk

After a happy life, Gmail users are experiencing a lot of nasty issues. In fact, hackers, crackers and phishers are becoming skilled more and more at stealing and spying and cracking Gmail accounts in order to steal private information. Gmail captcha got cracked, sly phishers stole and used other people’s Gmails causing huge paranoia in G-users who started backing up their accounts. Even Google is doing its best to make us  more suspicious once we sign-in to our Gmail, by creating a special feature which lets us see if anybody  managed to get to our  account before us. But what can you effectively  in order protect your Gmail account from viruses and phishers?

As usual, the most efficient ways to protect your personal data are, odd to say,  the simplest ones! All you need is  common sense. Here is a little, smart list of to-do and not-to-do things.

1. Use elaborate and difficult to guess passwords. Read this article on how to make strong passwords. Alternatively you can use this good Microsoft password checker.
2. Don’t write your password in your computer. Write them down on a piece of paper or use a secure website to store them.
3. Always, always sign-out from your Gmail once you have finished reading your e-mails!
4. Look at everything suspicious in your Gmail which has not been created by you. Go to Setting – Filters and check if there are any filters which aren’t yours. If any, delete them right away and modify your password!
5. If you dont’ use any e-mail client, go to Setting – Forwarding and POP/IMAP, disable forwarding, POP and IMAP.
6. Don’t reply to e-mail asking you to reveal your Gmail passwords even if the email itself comes from Google. As a matter of fact, Google will NEVER ask to reveal your passwords!
7. If you are accustomed to search the web for your Gmail log-in page because you don’t bookmark it, always look at its address. Don’t open anything different from mail.google.com (there are others Gmail log-in pages, but it is always better to choose the official and more famous Gmail page, if you are not that expert). That’s because sometimes phishers create ad-hoc pages looking like famous websites. If you try to sign-in on that particular page nothing happens, but in the meantime you managed to leave your username and password to  “ill-intentioned” guys.
8. Read these small guides written by Google on how to protect yourself and your Gmail from viruses.