Cybercriminals have always loved to attack email addresses. Therefore, all your official and personal email addresses are at risk of cyberattacks. The risk is greater than receiving spam emails. You are at risk of identity theft and fraud if your email address gets into the hands of attackers.
The email-based attacks keep getting stronger even after various email authentication protocols. According to research, 48% of the emails sent in 2022 were malicious.
Extra care is needed after you notice suspicious activity on your email account. You need to strengthen your account’s security to prevent phishing attacks. You and your email service provider must take steps to secure your email account.
The article provides details on what a scammer can do with your email address and how to protect your account from hackers.
How Scammers Can Get Your Email Accounts?
Stay alert of the ways used by scammers to get your email address. Here are some ways scammers use to breach your email security.
1. Exposed by a Data Breach
Various big industries have faced cyberattacks. These attacks can leak your personal information or official information. This makes your data vulnerable to scammers. A single attack on a big company or its database can leak the phone numbers, email addresses, and other personal information of all its clients and employees.
2. Found Through Your Social Media
Another common way for scammers to get your email address and other interests is through social media accounts. Every online platform requires users to enter their email addresses for login purposes. This way your email address becomes visible online.
The information present online is easy to find by the scammers. Hence, they steal the information including email addresses, and use it for phishing purposes.
3. Bought from a Data Broker
There are online companies that gather personal information about people and sell it online to companies. Some of these data barkers also sell information to scammers. The data often includes contact information of people including their email addresses. Scammers use this information for hacking and malicious purposes.
4. Through Phishing Attacks
Scammers can also gather the email addresses of the targets through phishing attacks. They gather information through login pages of fake websites. Users mistake the fake websites with the authentic ones and accidentally enter their login details to these websites.
Therefore it is essential to always check the authenticity of the websites before entering personal information. Double-lick the URLs to view the web pages.
5. Collected by Email Harvesting Bots
Automated bots are used to gather email addresses from the internet. The bots gather all the accounts having the “@” symbol in them. The publicly visible email addresses and the addresses linked with any online platform are easily gathered through these bots.
It is not easy to protect your accounts from these bots. However one can be cautious about listing their email addresses in public forums.
How Can Scammers Exploit Your Email Address?
Your email addresses can be used by scammers for various malicious purposes. It can put you at serious risk. Though there are various ways your email addresses can be exploited, some of these are the following.
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To Get Your Personal Information
Email accounts contain personal details including phone numbers, names, transaction emails, and other important emails. Scammers can gain access to this information and can use it against targets. The confidential information can be used to target the population with social engineering attacks.
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Online Account Hacking
As mentioned before, using the same email address for various online accounts can put all the accounts at risk. After hacking an email address, hackers can gain access to other online accounts. With a little effort, they can gain access to bank accounts, social media accounts, and other official accounts of the target.
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Impersonation Scams
Scammers don’t stop after hacking an account. The chain keeps going by hacking other people’s accounts. The people added to your accounts can also be hacked easily. They can be easily tricked by sending an email from your account. They will click the links without any doubt if not informed about the attack.
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Identity Theft Attempts
The leaked personal information through email and social media accounts can let hackers steal your identity. They can use the information to create fake accounts with your information. This puts your online links and financial accounts at risk.
Steps to Protect Your Email Accounts
You must take immediate steps if you notice any suspicious activity on your email accounts. Here are a few steps that must be taken to secure your email accounts.
1. Spot and Ignore Phishing Emails
The first step is to identify the attack. Most phishing attacks don’t cause harm if you don’t open the links attached. To identify these suspicious links, be vigilant when you receive emails. Most of the emails that are under phishing attacks have a sense of urgency. You can prevent the loss by taking immediate action.
Hackers usually copy and manipulate authentic email addresses. Keep in mind to double-check the sender’s address. Confirm it from the company’s website. Hover over the links to review the content inside the link.
You can also use the DMARC report analyzer for detailed reports on the authenticity of the emails. These reports can be used to check any suspicious activity through our account.
2. Secure Your Email and Online Accounts
After you find any suspicious activity on our account, secure your account in every possible way. Use different passwords for different online accounts. It makes it easier for hackers to reach your other accounts. Change your email account’s password and secure it with two-factor authentication (2FA).
The additional layer of security will make it difficult for hackers to enter your account even after knowing the password. You can always use more than one email address for different purposes. The separate email addresses must be used for official communication and social media accounts. Furthermore, secure your accounts with DMARC to prevent your accounts from being attacked.
3. Update Your Account Recovery Options
Turn on the account recovery options to get an alert when someone tries to barge into your account. A security alert must be taken seriously and accounts must be secured immediately.
For Gmail account security alerts, click on the Personal info in the navigation panel. Add a recovery phone number or email address under the contact info.
While using an Outlook account navigate to the Microsoft account security and update info. Open the add security info option and enter your phone number or email.
4. Report Phishing Scams
Don’t interact with suspicious links and attachments as they can leak more of your information. Instead of directly clicking on the links, hover over them first. If you witness suspicious activity, report the attack.
Report to your email service provider so that they can strengthen the security. If the email appears to be coming from a company, report to that company. Lastly, large-scale cyber attacks can be reported to agencies working to strengthen the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the FBI.
5. Update Email Spam Filters
Update the email spam filters to block incoming spam emails. This protects the inbox from future threats. Different email service providers provide various spam filters. Gmail provides automatic spam detection to detect spam emails. The phishing protection alerts users about emails that contain stolen data and suspicious content.
For email accounts on Outlook, navigate to the Home tab. Select the Delete group option. Enter Junk and open the Junk Email folder. This will let you select the level of spam filtration you want for your account.
6. Authenticate with Email Authentication Protocols
Emails protected with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC can easily be recovered after getting hacked. The protocols detect malicious activities from your email account. It makes it harder for scammers to exploit your account.
Email service providers authenticated with these protocols can also block malicious emails from being delivered. This also reduces the widespread impact of hacked accounts.
7. Find and Remove Email Addresses Online
The best prevention is keeping your account out of the scammer’s hands. Limit the visibility of your email address. On social media platforms, show your email address only to the people you know. Don’t add your email address to the public posts.
A sudden influx of spam emails means that your email address has gotten into the hands of data brokers. Protect your accounts with the help of data broker services online. Another way to check if your email address is listed anywhere is to google the name used in the address. Submit a removal request if you see your email address online.
Conclusion
Email accounts are the core of anyone’s online identity. Whether it is for social media accounts or work-related purposes, an email account is needed. An email account is home to online data including passwords, transaction details, login information, and other sensitive data. Therefore, it must be protected from scammers.
Many ways have been designed to protect email accounts. PowerDMARC provides an easy implementation of email authentication protocols to strengthen your account’s security. Securing your email account has been made easy for you. Start today with PowerDMARC’s 15-day free trial.
