What to do if your email has been found

It can be a real nightmare if
someone hacks and takes control of
your email account as it may
contain confidential information like
bank logins, credit card details and
other sensitive data. If you are one
such Internet user whose email
account has been compromised,
then this post will surely help you
out. In this post you will find the
possible ways and procedures to
get back your hacked email account.
For Gmail:
It can be a big disaster if your Gmail
account has been compromised
as it may be associated with several
services like Blogger, Analytics,
Adwords, Adsense, Orkut etc.
Losing access to your Gmail
account means losing access to all
the services associated it with too.
Here is a list of possible recovery
actions that you can try.
Step -1: Try resetting your
password since it is the easiest way
to get your account back in action.
In this process Google may ask you
to answer the secret question or
may send the password reset
details to the secondary email
address associated with your
compromised account. You can
reset you password from the
following link
Gmail Password Reset Link
If you cannot find success from the
Step-1 then proceed to Step-2.
Step-2: Many times the hacker will
change the secret question and
secondary email address right after
the account is compromised. This is
the reason for the Password Reset
process to fail. If this is the case then
you need to contact the Gmail
support team by filling out the
account recovery form. This form
will ask you to fill out several
questions like
1. Email addresses of up to five
frequently emailed contacts
2. Names of any 4 Labels that you
may have created in your account
3. List of other services associated
with your compromised account
4. Your last successful login date
5. Account created date
6. Last password that you
remember and many more …
You need to fill out this form as
much accurately as possible. It is
obvious to forget the dates of last
login, account creation and similar
terms. However you need to figure
out the closest possible date/
answers and fill out this form. This
is your last chance! The more
accurate the information filled out in
the recovery form, the more the
chances of getting your account
back. You may reach the account
recovery page form the following
link
Account Recovery Form
For Yahoo and Hotmail:
Unfortunately for Yahoo/Hotmail
there is no second option like filling
out the form or contacting the
support team. All you need to do is
either answer the secret
questions that you have setup or
reset the password using the
secondary email option.
To initiate the password reset
process just click on the Forgot
password link in your login page
and proceed as per the screen
instructions.
I hope this post will help you
recover the lost account.

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What to do if your Email has been hacked

It can be a real nightmare if
someone hacks and takes control of
your email account as it may
contain confidential information like
bank logins, credit card details and
other sensitive data. If you are one
such Internet user whose email
account has been compromised,
then this post will surely help you
out. In this post you will find the
possible ways and procedures to
get back your hacked email account.
For Gmail:
It can be a big disaster if your Gmail
account has been compromised
as it may be associated with several
services like Blogger, Analytics,
Adwords, Adsense, Orkut etc.
Losing access to your Gmail
account means losing access to all
the services associated it with too.
Here is a list of possible recovery
actions that you can try.
Step -1: Try resetting your
password since it is the easiest way
to get your account back in action.
In this process Google may ask you
to answer the secret question or
may send the password reset
details to the secondary email
address associated with your
compromised account. You can
reset you password from the
following link
Gmail Password Reset Link
If you cannot find success from the
Step-1 then proceed to Step-2.
Step-2: Many times the hacker will
change the secret question and
secondary email address right after
the account is compromised. This is
the reason for the Password Reset
process to fail. If this is the case then
you need to contact the Gmail
support team by filling out the
account recovery form. This form
will ask you to fill out several
questions like
1. Email addresses of up to five
frequently emailed contacts
2. Names of any 4 Labels that you
may have created in your account
3. List of other services associated
with your compromised account
4. Your last successful login date
5. Account created date
6. Last password that you
remember and many more …
You need to fill out this form as
much accurately as possible. It is
obvious to forget the dates of last
login, account creation and similar
terms. However you need to figure
out the closest possible date/
answers and fill out this form. This
is your last chance! The more
accurate the information filled out in
the recovery form, the more the
chances of getting your account
back. You may reach the account
recovery page form the following
link
Account Recovery Form
For Yahoo and Hotmail:
Unfortunately for Yahoo/Hotmail
there is no second option like filling
out the form or contacting the
support team. All you need to do is
either answer the secret
questions that you have setup or
reset the password using the
secondary email option.
To initiate the password reset
process just click on the Forgot
password link in your login page
and proceed as per the screen
instructions.
I hope this post will help you
recover the lost account.

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How to stop spamming

In
this post I will try my best to give
every possible information about
the spam and will also tell you about
how to combat spam.
What is SPAM?
Spam is the abuse of electronic
messaging systems (including most
broadcast media, digital delivery
systems) to send unsolicited bulk
messages indiscriminately. Most
widely recognized form of spam is
email spam.
Where do these SPAM come
from?
These spam come only from
spammers and never from a
legitimate user or a company. These
spammers send a single email to
hundreds (some times thousands
or millions) of email addresses at a
time. They either send it manually
or use spambots to automate the
process of spamming.
Why do spammers SPAM?
The main goal of spammers is to
send the spam (unsolicited bulk
messages) to as many people as
possible in order to make profit. For
example, John builds a small
website to sell an ebook which gives
information about weight loss. In
order to make sales he needs
publicity for his website. Instead of
spending money on advertising,
John decides to create an email
which contains information about
his site along with it’s link and send
this email to say 100 email
addresses in his contact list. If 1
person out of hundred buy this
book john gets $10. What if he
sends this email to 1000s of email
addresses. He gets $100. Imagine, if
he sends this email to 1 Million email
addresses he gets $100000.
Now I hope you understood the
idea behind spamming. So in order
to make money, spammers send
their advertising emails to as many
people as possible without
respecting the recipient ’s privacy.
From where do SPAMmers get
my email address?
On the Internet there exists many
sites who collect the email IDs of
people and sell them to spammers
in bulk. Most often, people sign up
for monthly newsletters and take up
surveys. This is the time where
these scam sites get their email
addresses. Also many spammers
collect email addresses by using
spambots. These spambots collect
email addresses from the Internet in
order to build mailing lists. Such
spambots are web crawlers that can
gather email addresses from Web
sites, newsgroups, forums, special-
interest group (SIG) postings, and
chat-room conversations.
Spammers also use the trick of
creating Hoax Emails for gathering
a huge list of email IDs. For
example, a spammer sends a hoax
email which says “Forward
this Message to Help Severely
Burned Child ”. This email claims that
11 cents will be donated to the child’s
family every time the message is
sent to others. Most of the people
believe this and start forwarding this
hoax email to all of the IDs in their
contact list. In this way the email
spreads rapidly and eventually
when it reaches the creator
(spammer), the spammer gets a
huge list of valid email addresses in
the email header. When you get
these kind of hoax emails, you can
see for yourself in the email header
which contains a huge list of email
addresses of all those people to
whom the email is being forwarded
to. This is one of the effective
methods used by spammers to
gather email addresses.
Is SPAMming legal?
Spamming is completely illegal. Yet
it is really difficult to stop spammers
from spamming since they keep
moving from one hosting company
to another after getting banned. This
makes it practically impossible to
catch spammers and prosecute
them.
How to protect my email
account from getting
SPAMmed?
The following methods can be used
to combat email spam.
1. Use spam filters for your email
account. If you ’re using email
services like Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail
etc. then spam filters are used by
defaut. Each spam filter has
it ’s algorithm to detect spam emails
and will automatically move them to
SPAM folder. This keeps your inbox
free from spam. However some
spam emails become successful to
make their way into the inbox by
successfully bypassing the filters.
2. Do not post your email address in
public forums, user comments and
chat-rooms. Give your email
address only to trustworthy
websites while signing up for
newsletters.
3. While taking up online surveys
and filling up feedback forms, it is
better not to give your personal
email address. Instead singup for a
dummy email account and use this
for surveys and feedback forms.
4. While posting your contact email
address on your website use this
format: emailaddress [at]
yoursite.com instead of
emailaddress@yoursite.com.
This protects your email address
from being indexed by spambots.
5. Do not respond to hoax
messages. When you receive a
hoax email, avoid forwarding it to
your friends. Examples of hoax
messages can be found at
www.hoax-slayer.com. If you
really want to forward it to your
friends, make sure that you use
“ Bcc” (blind carbon copy) option to
send the email. This will hide all the
email IDs to which the mail is
forwarded to.
I hope this helps. Pass your
suggestions and feedback via
comments.

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10 Internet Security Tips

With the sudden rise in the Internet
usage across the globe over
the past few years, there has
also been a rise in the amount of
online scams and frauds. Today
most of the Internet users are
unaware of the most prevailing
online threats which pose a real
challenge for their safe Internet
usage. As a result, Online Security
has become a questionable factor
for the most Internet users.
However it is still possible to
effectively combat online insecurity
provided that the users are well
aware of the common scams and
frauds and know how to protect
themselves. A study shows that
over 91% of the Internet users are
unaware of the online scams and
are worried about their security.
Well if you are one among those
91% then here is a list of 10 tips to
ensure your total online security.
1. Always install a good antivirus
software and keep it up-to-date.
Also install a good anti-spyware to
keep your PC away from spywares.

2. Always visit known and trusted
websites. If you are about to visit an
unknown website, ensure that you
do not click on suspectable links and
banners.
3. Perform a virus scan on the files/
email attachments that you
download before executing them.
4. Regularly Update your operating
system and browser software. For
a better security it is recommended
that you surf the Internet through
the latest version of your browser
program.
5. Never share your password
(email, bank logins etc.) with any
one for any reason. Choose a
strong password (A blend of
alphanumeric+special symbols) and
change it regularly, eg. every 3
months. Avoid using easy-to-guess
passwords. (ex. pet ’s name or kid’s
name)
6. Always type the URL of the
website in your browser ’s address
bar to enter the login pages. For ex.
To login to your Gmail account type
http://mail.google.com
7. Before you enter your password
on any login page, ensure that you
see https instead of http. ex.
https://mail.google.com instead
of http://mail.google.com.
HTTPS protocol implements SSL
(Secure Sockets Layer) and provide
better security than a normal HTTP.
8. Beware of phishing emails! Do
not respond to any email that
request you to update your login
details by clicking on a link in the
body of the email. Such links can
lead to Fake Login Pages (Spoofed
Pages). For more information on
phishing refer What is Phishing?.
Also refer How to Protect an
Email Account from being
Hacked .
9. Always hit the logout button to
close your login session rather than
abruptly terminating the browser
window. Also clear your web
browser caches after every session
to remove the temporary files
stored in the memory and hard disk
of your PC.
10. Avoid (Stop) using any public
computers or computers in
the Internet cafes to access any
sensitive/confidential information.
Also avoid such computers to login
to your email/bank accounts. You
cannot be sure if any spyware,
keystroke-logger, password-sniffer
and other malicious programs have
not been installed on such a PC.
By following the above 10 tips your
online security can be guaranteed
upto 90%. I hope this will help my
readers for keeping themselves safe
from any of the online insecurities.
Cheers! Pass your comments.

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How to use Google to hack.

Google serves almost 80 percent of
all search queries on the Internet,
proving itself as the most popular
search engine. However Google
makes it possible to reach not only
the publicly available information
resources, but also gives access to
some of the most confidential
information that should never have
been revealed. In this post I will
show how to use Google for
exploiting security vulnerabilities
within websites. The following are
some of the hacks that can be
accomplished using Google.
1. Hacking Security
Cameras
There exists many security cameras
used for monitoring places like
parking lots, college campus, road
traffic etc. which can be hacked
using Google so that you can view
the images captured by those
cameras in real time. All you have to
do is use the following search query
in Google. Type in Google search
box exactly as follows and hit enter
inurl:”viewerframe?
mode=motion”
Click on any of the search results
(Top 5 recommended) and you will
gain access to the live camera which
has full controls. You now have access
to the Live cameras which work in
real-time. You can also move the
cameras in all the four directions,
perform actions such as zoom in
and zoom out. This camera has
really a less refresh rate. But there
are other search queries through
which you can gain access to other
cameras which have faster refresh
rates. So to access them just use
the following search query.
intitle:”Live View / – AXIS”
Click on any of the search results to
access a different set of live
cameras. Thus you have hacked
Security Cameras using Google.
2. Hacking Personal and
Confidential Documents
Using Google it is possible to gain
access to an email repository
containing CV of hundreds of people
which were created when applying
for their jobs. The documents
containing their Address, Phone,
DOB, Education, Work experience
etc. can be found just in seconds.

intitle:”curriculum vitae” “phone
* * *” “address *” “e-mail”

You can gain access to a list of .xls
(excel documents) which contain
contact details including email
addresses of large group of people.
To do so type the following search
query and hit enter.

filetype:xls inurl:”email.xls”

Also it’s possible to gain access to
documents potentially containing
information on bank accounts,
financial summaries and credit card
numbers using the following search
query

intitle:index.of finances.xls

3. Hacking Google to gain
access to Free Stuffs
Ever wondered how to hack Google
for free music or ebooks. Well here
is a way to do that. To download
free music just enter the following
query on google search box and hit
enter.
“?intitle:index.of?mp3 eminem“
Now you’ll gain access to the whole
index of eminem album where in
you can download the songs of
your choice. Instead of eminem you
can subtitute the name of your
favorite album. To search for the
ebooks all you have to do is replace
“eminem” with your favorite book
name. Also replace “mp3″ with
“pdf” or “zip” or “rar”.

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