Nowadays, email is a common tool hackers use to target their victims. This is a great method for bad actors to reach hundreds or thousands of people simultaneously with fraudulent messages. Email-based assaults may lead to phishing scams, malware infections, and other issues, so you must protect your account as much as possible
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8 Ways to Protect Your Email Account
To continue keeping your email account safe from bad guys, let's talk about several ways to do so.
1. Make Your Password Robust and Distinct
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Although it may be apparent, many individuals reuse passwords across all of their accounts. Despite its apparent convenience, this poses a significant risk. If you use the same password for all of your accounts, a cybercriminal who obtains your email address and password may access all of your accounts.
Thus, eliminate this danger by using different passwords for each of your accounts. You may keep all your passwords in various places, including on a piece of paper, hard disk, password manager, or elsewhere. Make sure that, if you're keeping your passwords on a physical item, it is being stored in a very secure area.
If you're using a password manager app, understand that these may be prone to attacks since they depend on internet connections and software applications to store your data, both of which are susceptible to abuse by hackers.
Some of you should also make your passwords as distinctive as possible so that these individuals are more difficult to break overall. Including upper case letters, numerals, and symbols will aid you here.
2. Use Your Provider's Anti-Spam Features
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Because spam mail is now so popular throughout the globe, email providers have created anti-spam solutions that you may use to prevent these unlawful messages. Different email providers offer different capabilities; however, if you're using a well-known and reliable email service, like Microsoft Outlook or Gmail, you'll likely be able to activate a spam filter that places any questionable emails in a spam folder.
This implies that most spam mail will not appear in your immediate inbox, which minimizes the possibility of you engaging with it. You may always check your spam folder if required since occasionally spam filters misinterpret genuine emails for harmful ones. But you should still be vigilant about what mail you select to deal with in your spam folder.
3. Block Suspicious Addresses
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While some fraudsters may only try to contact you once or twice, others may make persistent efforts to get in touch. This is why you should block email addresses that you have determined to be hazardous.
It's normally very fast and straightforward to block an email address, although the procedure may change significantly depending on your service. It may generally be done by marking a single email and choosing the Block option, or by going into your email account settings.
4. Use Two-Factor Authentication
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Two-factor authentication may help secure not only your email account but your other social media accounts, financial accounts, and more. This technique works by confirming a sign-in via another trusted device or platform. For example, if you're attempting to enter your Gmail, you may select to verify the login using your smartphone.
Alternatively, you may utilize security keys, have codes texted to you, or use an authenticator software like Authy or Google Authenticator. This extra layer of protection makes it that much tougher for a hostile actor to access your email account, even if they know both your email address and password for login.
5. Use Antivirus Software on Your Devices
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Antivirus software should be a primary priority for everyone using a PC, laptop, smartphone, or tablet. It's now exceedingly simple for fraudsters to put malware onto your devices, whether it is to steal data, execute unlawful acts, or even demand a ransom.
While all antivirus solutions vary, respectable providers may conduct frequent scans of your device to discover and eradicate harmful malware to keep you secure. Cybercriminals regularly attempt to distribute malware via email, whether it is via malicious attachments or links; thus, having an antivirus application running will help block such harmful software from infecting your device.
Antivirus applications may also block thieves from compromising your email account via the use of malware. So, regardless of the angle by which malware is being exploited, having an antivirus product in place may help you keep your email account secure.
6. Update Your Apps Regularly
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These days, many folks utilize their email accounts via applications. While you normally can access your email account over the web, utilizing an app makes the procedure that much simpler, particularly if you're using your smartphone or tablet on the move.
But apps are not flawless. These apps can come with vulnerabilities (or security weaknesses) that fraudsters can exploit. In an email program, for example, a cybercriminal may leverage a weakness to breach accounts and steal data or propagate spam mail further.
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So, whenever you can, update your email apps. Updates may be tedious and time-consuming, but upgrading an email app shouldn't take long and can help eradicate problems or vulnerabilities. Updates may even provide you access to better security features, which can aid further in securing your email account.
7. Use a "Burner" Email
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Sometimes, you want to sign up for anything using your email address, but you're concerned if the platform is secure. It's necessary to conduct a little investigation into the site at this stage to determine whether it can be trusted.
If, however, the general reputation of the platform is neither here nor there and you still want to utilize it, try utilizing a burner or throwaway email account. This is an email account that you may use if you're concerned about getting spam.
Of course, you shouldn't start utilizing a throwaway email for your day-to-day emails. Its primary objective should be to keep your main account protected. So, do not connect your burner account to your genuine account, and do not save much, if any, data on it.
You may use a burner email on a long- or short-term basis, depending on its purpose. But having one available to use at all times may be very handy and can help keep potentially hazardous individuals away from your primary email account.
8. Avoid using public Wi-Fi to view emails.
Most public WiFi, such as that found in coffee shops and hotel rooms, is unencrypted. This implies that anyone using the same connection — potentially a large number of individuals — may intercept and access your data. Because of this, it's best to avoid using public Wi-Fi for any sensitive personal information, such as emails, but if you must, use a VPN. A VPN, or Virtual Private Network, will encrypt your data so anybody spying can’t obtain access. Namecheap’s FastVPN is a superb security choice if you operate remotely.
Keep Your Email Safe and Avoid Scammers
Using the guidelines above, you can guarantee that your email account is as safe as possible against unscrupulous actors. With hackers regularly leveraging email providers to transmit malware and spam, you must be on top of your email security and are doing what you can to defend your account.
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