Gmail Security Checklist For Safer Gmail Account

An article by Vinay Gowda    30 Comments

Gmail is one of the famous email service, provided by Google. Starting from day one, Gmail has been a successful email service which drastically changed many things which Yahoo! mail and other email services couldn’t provide for many years.

As we own a email id, we like to store many important information, conversations, documents and many more things in Google account. We do check our mailbox at least once in a day!

Unfortunately, a Google Account is also valuable in the eyes of spammers and other people looking to do harm. There has been many incidents noted by Gmail users now days about suspicious activities. Following is the one among that,

When you click on more info, you will get show details about this activity!

Like me many users too had the same problem! Account hijackers prey on the bad habits of the average Internet user. The most common ways hijackers can get access to your Google password are,

• Password re-use: You sign up for an account on a third-party site with your Google username and password. If that site is hacked and your sign-in information is discovered, the hijacker has easy access to your Google Account.
• Malware: You use a computer with infected software that is designed to steal your passwords as you type (“keylogging”) or grab them from your browser’s cache data.
• Phishing: You respond to a website, email, or phone call that claims to come from a legitimate organization and asks for your username and password.

As you can see in the above images, hijackers have many tactics for stealing your password, and it’s important to be aware of all of them.

Finally Google started a service which can help its Gmail users to obtain a 100% security. As October is National Cyber Security Awareness month and a good time for a reminder about why hijackers do what they do and how you can protect your account.

Google Security Check

As a Gmail user you have to make sure your account is secure, take a minute to complete our Gmail security checklist to make sure your mail security measures are up to date.

Tech Link: Check your Gmail Account here.

Before you start, sign in to Google Account. Google Security Check has 5 parts,

Part 1: Checks your computer for viruses malware, up to date OS and softwares

Part 2: Checks your browser for plug-ins, extensions, and third-party programs/tools that require access to your Google Account credentials

Part 3: Checks your Google account.

Part 4: Checks your Gmail settings whether you are using secure connection to sign in. Check for any strange recent activity on your account.

Part 5: Checks for some general remainders.

Tips and Tricks

Tip to stay secure:

• Never re-use passwords for your important accounts like online banking, email, social networking, and commerce.
• Change your password periodically, and be sure to do so for important accounts whenever you suspect one of them may have been at risk. Create password which has alphabets, numbers and special characters.
• Never respond to messages, non-Google websites, or phone calls asking for your Google username or password.

We personally suggest our visitors to go for Google Security Check and make themselves feel secure. Hope you all will check it