Tips to secure your Gmail

Mumbai: You can save your Gmail account from getting hacked by following some smart tips listed below:

• Set up a strong password which can’t be easily guessed by others

Setting up a strong password will help you save your Gmail account from getting hacked. The password must be unique, difficult to guess, but easy for you to remember.

Here is how you can make a strong password from a simple everyday phrase.

Try using a phrase or a sentence that you often stick with. Or the lyrics of a song you love. It could be anything. Take only the first letters from each word and make a password from it.

Let’s use a phrase as an example, such as ‘Jack and Jill went up the hill’. Now take the first letters of each word to create your new password ’jajwuth’. Now to make your password even stronger, you could even make use of numbers. The numeral could include the information of how many years you prefer to live or your car number. i.e. your password can then be ‘jajwuth75’ or ‘jajwuth7167’

To make this password even more complex, capitalise a few letters from inside or every alternate letter. Such passwords are quite unpredictable and difficult to guess by the ones who intend to hack your Gmail account.

Just incase you forget your password, sign in to the Google security page and click to ‘Edit your recovery options’, add up a back up email address and even your phone number to it. Just in case your email address is hacked, the recovery option will send the code to your phone or the backup email address

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• Check your ‘Inbox’ and ‘Sent’ tabs regularly

It’s advisable to check your ‘Inbox’ and ‘Sent’ tabs on regular basis, This will help you keep track of any suspicious mails sent from your mail or if the hacker has deleted important mails without your knowledge.

If possible, register your Gmail account to get constant activity alerts. As per the official reports, Gmail’s Recent activity page can help you see security-related actions- like signing in to your Google Account, changing your password, or adding a recovery email address or phone number.

This will help you track down if any unknown person has signed-in from a browser you've never used, or a location you've never been to. As soon as you notice such suspicious activity, it’s better you change your password as soon as possible.

• Prevent identity theft and avoid scams

If an unknown mail asks about your personal or bank information, don’t reply to it. Many spam messages ask for usernames, passwords, Social Security numbers, bank account numbers, PINs, full credit card numbers etc.

Don’t reply or start filling out any forms or sign-in screens that might be linked to from those messages.

Report these messages as phishing

If you receive an email asking for personal information (phishing), you can report it to Google: 

• Sign in to Gmail.
• Open the message you'd like to report.
• Click the down arrow next to Reply in the top-right corner of the message pane.
• Select Report Phishing.

Here’s how to set up Gmail’s two-step verification:

• Click the Tool icon (it looks like a gear) near the upper-right corner of the window and select Settings.
• Click the ‘Security’ tab- 2-Step Verification’- Setup.
• Google will then send a Verification code to your phone and after feeding in the code, you can tick the Trust your Computer option.