Someone hacked my gmail account. Can someone help me out with retrieving it? I think that my primary email account was changed as well. Please help.
|
Search BG for prior coverage of the problem, be creative in your choice of keywords; a sample:
http://blogoscoped.com/search/?q=account+hijacked
This will yield e.g. "What If Your Google Account Was Stolen?" of November past, [http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2007-11-09.html] with 88 comments, some of which contain Sound GooglAdvice on your most promising course of action, incl. concrete, rather than the usual Internetty-bland, pointers to resourses of recovery. |
I tried submitting a account reclamation questionnaire. When should I expect to get an answer? Can I hire a hacker to hack back into the account? |
<< When should I expect to get an answer? >> I don't think it should take long..
<< Can I hire a hacker to hack back into the account? >> That's up to you.. I don't think Google is offering hackers for users that their account has been stolen. ;) |
There are really a few different possibilities.
– Your Google account and password were compromised by an application you used or a web site that you visited. You were the victim of malware and/or a phishing scheme, and either had your user name and password logged via some form of keylogger, or you entered them into an unsafe location.
– Someone you know who has at some point gotten your user name and password has misused this information.
– You have used a public machine and not logged or cleared the browser cache prior to leaving the machine, and the subsequent user has discovered the answer to your "secret question" in the emails he or she had access to on your account.
– Someone used brute force to attack your specific username. (rather unlikely and fairly costly)
– Someone has cracked security on Google accounts and selected yours amongst the hundreds they would have access to. (very unlikely)
There may be other mechanisms, but the most common way of acquiring accounts and passwords from regular users have two things in common:
– They do not target specific users – They depend on the user providing the information in some way or another.
Once stolen, your credentials are being used by a specific user who is probably fairly cautious about information disclosure. In other words – just like you would call the police about a stolen car (and not look for another car thief), you should use the official channels here. You might get your account back, you might not.
|