Pitfalls To Avoid And Improvements To Make When Using Your Gmail Account
Almost everyone you know or have ever met used online email, to communicate with the rest of the world. We use our email accounts of responding back to messages from family and friends, who may be having a wedding or some kind of get together and want to share the specific details of the event. Email is much more formal than a text and sometimes when a message is written from the heart, almost as sentimental as a letter written by hand. The main email service the majority of people use is Gmail. Protecting your account means you must activate some of the extra tools that Google has made. You must become aware of the signs that a savvy hacker or scam artist is trying to test the lines of your fortress which are you inbox.
Image by - Alexis C. Schultz
Don’t receive important mail
If you know you’ll be receiving important mail, which involved a serious amount of money, such as a business deal, signature need for a contract, or something important to do with your bank, don’t go through Gmail. Google is constantly working to update their servers and software, but hackers do find their way in from time to time. If you know you have incoming mail which is dealing with a large amount of money, use a virtual address for mail. With the location in the real world, away from home and in a location totally of your choosing, you can have peace of mind knowing that a hard copy of your important mail has been sent to you. You can also, pick up the mail at any time with no time cutoff regarding an amount of days.
Photo credit - David Whelan
Last account activity
One of the ways to protect yourself from impersonators is to link your account, with another account of yours. At the end of your page, on the bottom right-hand side, there is a link that says ‘last account activity.' This showed you when you were previously logged on or essentially when your account was last active. Click on the details, and if the time isn’t correlated to the correct times you were on, chances are a bot or hacker was on your account. You may even have got a message from Google, asking you via text or notification on your account, whether or not it's okay if your details are changed.
Setup your verification
Google has an option for you to manually put a two-step authentication on your account, so it's not just your email and password that’s needed to access it. Go to the security tab which should be in the account settings option or page. You’ll find a button which says ‘change password,' then click on it to open up more options. The authentication process relies upon you to give Google your phone number, but it must be a mobile so you can receive as SMS i.e. a text message. You’ll be sent a code through text or a voice message. After you have authenticated that you’ll be one step closer. Next, when you log back in using a computer, Google will automatically believe that this is your main machine and trust it, meaning you won’t need additional code to verify it.
It takes a little time, but with good practice, you’ll learn the ins and out of Gmail. Don’t risk your truly valuable mail, especially if it deals with a large amount of money. Connect multiple accounts together so they each can guard against the other being hacked, set up a two-step verification for increased layers of security.
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Note: Some of the information in samples on this website may have been impersonated or spoofed.