Gmail is the best email service provider till today and why not because its creator is Google, the name which is very common to everyone.Although, Google makes every possible steps towards protecting your account but there are still certain gaps through which hackers, phishers and scammers enters.
Gmail has been forging its security measures by adding new security features but many of us are not aware of it. In this post, I will tell you some technical tips by which you can increase the security level of your account. These tips are very easy to implement. Go through the whole guide and you will be protecting your Gmail with a much more security.
Gmail has been forging its security measures by adding new security features but many of us are not aware of it. In this post, I will tell you some technical tips by which you can increase the security level of your account. These tips are very easy to implement. Go through the whole guide and you will be protecting your Gmail with a much more security.
9 Ways to Increase the Security Of Your Gmail Account
1. 2-Step Verification
Google introduced this feature to make the security level of your Gmail account to a much higher level. After enabling this feature on your account, every time when you try to log in, you need to enter a code that is sent to your registered mobile number. So nobody can access your account with your password only. Without having your phone, it impossible to hack your account.
It is very easy to enable 2-Step Verification on your account. Click here to go to the setting page and follow the simple instructions and that's all.
You can also create a backup phone number and printable backup codes as an alternative if you loose your phone.
2. Check Granted Account Access
The very important thing you should check to see if there is any suspicious activities happening in your account is your granted account access settings. If a hacker has a chance to get into your account, he will most probably add his own fake email for easier future access.
So how can he do it ? He just has to hack your account and then click on Settings > Account and Import > Grant access to your account and they add their fake email address. Now, you knows everything, its your turn to go through the above steps and instead of adding a new email, you have to check is there any unwanted email on that list. Remove the email if you find it.
3. Check Your Filter, Forwading and POP/IMAP
The account is hacked when the user has his account signed on and he went to visit a bad site. The site has a backdoor to extract information from your Gmail account, and the backdoor is the Filter. Filters can transfer emails as long as the user has filter in his account.
Therefore, it is recommended to remove suspicious filters from your account to protect it from these bad sites.
4. Enable HTTPS Security
When it comes accessing your account in public wireless or non-encrypted networks, HTTPS could mean your security. Leaving this feature disabled will make easier for hacker to crack a path into your Gmail account.
To enable this feature, go to Settings > General > Browser Connection and check the option "Always use HTTPS". Don't forget to Save changes.
By doing this, your account is protected by a secure protocol that provides authenticated and encrypted communication.
5. Revoke Unauthorized Access
You have seen many times that to access a certain app, you are required to give access it to your Facebook account. Same thing also happens with the Gmail. To use those websites and applications you are required to give access to your Google account.
Many users are not aware of this security hole because it asks to access your Google account not Gmail account. This is one of the most useful trick hackers uses to hack a Gmail account.
Click here to see for how many sites you have granted this access. You can simply remove any site if you find any suspicious or unused site in that list.
6. Track Your Account Activity
One of the best method to know if your account is hacked or not is to check your account's activity. It is very easy to check your account activity and you can easily came to know about all the previous login and location of login on your account.
Sign in to your account and in the bottom part of your mail, you will see a message "Last account activity : (xyz) minutes ago" click on the details and you will see access type, Location and date that you have signed into your Gmail in the past few days.
7. Adopt Browser Plugins
After doing so many efforts to protect your account, there are still so many expert hackers who can still have the skills to get into your account. To overcome this situation, we can apply browser plugins to your browser to increase the security level in your web pages. These plugins can check and warn you that you are trying to access a phishing and also it removes the unwanted threats.
Web of Trust is one of those amazing plugins which warns you when you access a bad site. It will inform you that you are visiting a website with a poor reputation. It is available in all major browsers.
8. Enhance Security Question-Answer
Hackers love to hack a account through mail recovery security questions rather than confronting your strong passwords. This is quite reasonable as most of the sites teaches you to create a strong password but never teach you to create a strong security question.
Here, you can do a simple trick. Make a question and give a wrong answer to it. For example, let's say your question is "Who is your best friend" then you can put the answer as "teeth". Make it as nonsensical as possible but make a answer which is memorable to you.
9. Make a Strong Password
Your password is the most important guard of your account. So, it is very important to make your password as strong as possible.
You should avoid choosing easy passwords just to make it easily memorable. You should avoid simple passwords like "iloveyou", "password", "123456789", "1q2w3e4r" etc.
Let's say you want to choose the password "Iwasbornin 1996", it is a very easy password. Instead of this you can choose "Iwbi1996". It is shorter than previous one but it is still more strong than it.
To make it further strong you can insert a special character after every 1 or 2 alphabets like "Iw@bi@19@96.
Otherwise, to be in a more safe zone, you can use randomly typed 20 characters password and memorize it.
10. Never Trust Anyone
It may happen that the account of your relative or friend is hacked and the hacker now wants to hack your account also. So, he will send you email on the behalf of your relative and by sending spam mails, they will try to get into your account.
So these are among the best tips to save your Gmail account from hackers, phishers and spammers. There is no 100% guaranteed tip to protect your account but after using these above tips, the chances of your account getting hacked will be greatly decreased. I hope you liked this guide on ways to protect your Gmail account from getting hacked.
Thanks for reading and share this guide with your friends also so that they can benefit from it.
