We now turn to today’s (belated, sorry my automatic posting tool broke and didn’t post this entry) paranoia post. And today’s paranoia is a reminder to check out the ways and means you can get your email back should someone hack your password. Often the way to reset a password is to send a recovery email via email. But if the very thing you are trying to recover IS email, obviously you need some other means to gain access and reset the password. If you are unsure if your main email account has such a secondary access, now is the time to check it out. Gmail will often remind you if you don’t have such a secondary account. For Outlook you go into the security settings of your account. I am seeing more and more web sites asking to set up multi factor and or secondary access to ensure you can get back into an account.
I’ve also seen where when an email account gets hacked, this reset account gets changed to the attacker’s email address so that they can reset it. For all the talk of passwords are dead, we are still so dependent on them.
So take some time to determine if you have a secondary means to get back into your account and prove that you are you. If you can’t prove that you are you, you might not be able to get back into your email account. I’ve known some folks who have had this happen to them and it’s not a fun thing to deal with.