How to recover a hacked Gmail account

Well I faced this personally couple of days back when I got a lot calls from my business partners and employees saying that they have been getting weird mails from me. Those mails asked them to visit some website and buy cheap original stuff from there. Since people bank on my words so some of them did fall trap of this scam. This was happening since the last 3-4 months and I was not aware of this. Even after changing password, those spam emails kept going from my Gmail id. Finally I managed to clean my account with a lot of online research. I compiled all the steps here for your convenience. Even if you think that your account is not hacked, you can always check the following points to make sure it’s safe.

These are the settings that you can check from your end. Even after this if you observe that your account is still getting hacked then probably your PC or Browser might be the culprit.

1. Check last login activity: Scroll down to the bottom of your “Inbox” page and on the right bottom corner you will see “last account activity”. Click on details to get the information of your last log-in activities. If your account is being logged in from an unknown place, it’s high time to follow the next steps properly.
2. Change password: Create a new and strong password which is very complex. Go to Settings > Accounts and Import > Change account settings > Change password.
3. Change password recovery options: Change the way of how you want to recover your lost password. Select a good security question, alternate email account and provide your mobile number as the verification code will be sent on these. To change password recovery options, go to Settings > Accounts and Import > Change account settings > Change password recovery options.
4. Check for potential spam: There are basically 2 places in your Gmail account where spam can be saved and you will not be able to notice it: Signature and Vacation Responder. Turn them off or check if they have still got what you wrote over there or is it something different.  To check signature, go to Settings > General > Signature and for vacation responder it’s the same path, go to Settings > General > Vacation Responder.
5. Check for possible Email theft: Last but not the least; you need to check if your emails are being stolen. They might be stolen in many ways like some other mail id being displayed when you sending mails and then the reply will be sent to that email id only. Other email settings that you need to check will be filters and forwarding and POP/IMAP settings. Follow the path show below:

Settings > Accounts and Import > Send Mail As (it should have your correct email address).

Settings > Filters (there should not any filter to forward or delete your mails).

Disable mail forwarding settings:

Settings > Forwarding and POP/IMAP > Forwarding (disable if you are not using it or insert correct address)

Settings > Forwarding and POP/IMAP > POP Download (disable it)

Settings > Forwarding and POP/IMAP > IMAP Access (disable it)

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