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"You&amp;#039;re not in Amsterdam, right? It wasn&amp;#039;t the typical Wednesday morning email, sent from a friend who I&amp;#039;d seen the night before\u2026in New York City. According to my Gmail account, however, I&amp;#039;d scooted off to Europe sometime after midnight, lost my passport and reached out to every contact in my address book asking for money. Yep, I&amp;#039;d been hacked. Next came an hour of frantic Googling, a panicked tweet (&amp;quot;I&amp;#039;M NOT IN AMSTERDAM!&amp;quot;) and some personal damage control, including fielding questions from an ex-boyfriend, a long-past professor and a woman who said she had no idea who I was, but had received my fraudulent email. Had I been better informed, I would&amp;#039;ve kept calm and followed these nine post-hacking steps. 1. Pinpoint the problem. The most obvious sign of hacking is the slew of messages you&amp;#039;ll receive from acquaintances either stating that your account&amp;#039;s been hacked or wondering if they should really wire money overseas. Also, according to Kevin Beaver, an Atlanta-based independent computer security expert and author of Hacking for Dummies, &amp;quot;you might receive bounced emails or other odd messages from people you don&amp;#039;t know. Or your computer and/or Internet might start running slowly.&amp;quot; On Facebook, red flags include mysterious links posted to your friends&amp;#039; timelines under your name or problems signing into your account. 2. Change your password. If someone&amp;#039;s simply poached your password, resetting it should solve your problem. Andrea Freund, a spokeswoman for Gmail, advises getting creative when choosing your new login. &amp;quot;Stay away from obvious choices like children&amp;#039;s names or other information that might be available online.&amp;quot; Freund also suggests keeping your account recovery options up to date in case you get shut out completely. For example, Gmail can send a link to your phone or a separate email address to help you regain access. For more on taking back your account, check Gmail&amp;#039;s recovery page or Facebook&amp;#039;s Help Center. 3. Run an antivirus scan. Though a sabotaged outbox is devastating enough, Bhavani Thuraisingham, PhD, a professor of computer science and executive director of the Cyber Security Research and Education Center at the University of Texas at Dallas, says, &amp;quot;What&amp;#039;s more dangerous is malware, or malicious software sending all your information to a hacker&amp;quot; without you knowing it. &amp;quot;If you suspect you&amp;#039;ve been hacked, run malware scans using multiple tools,&amp;quot; says Beaver. If one scan doesn&amp;#039;t catch a virus, another might. Some of Beaver&amp;#039;s favorite scans: Webroot, which offers a free trial, as well as Avast and Malwarebytes, which offer free versions indefinitely. Even if you&amp;#039;re just the victim of password cracking, run a scan to be safe. And if your scan picks up a virus, change your password again. 4. Check your settings. &amp;quot;Once you&amp;#039;re back in your account or have reset your password, make sure the hacker hasn&amp;#039;t changed your settings,&amp;quot; says Freund. &amp;quot;Check the &amp;#039;Forwarding and Pop/IMAP&amp;#039; tab to make sure your email is being directed properly.&amp;quot; Otherwise, a hacker may still be able to intercept your messages. Find settings under a drop-down menu in the upper right corner when you&amp;#039;re logged into your email. (For Gmail and Yahoo it&amp;#039;s under the gear icon; for AOL it&amp;#039;s under &amp;quot;Options.&amp;quot;) On Facebook you don&amp;#039;t have to worry about forwarding, but still make sure nobody&amp;#039;s fiddled with your account or privacy settings. 5. Reach out to your contacts. While a hacking can leave you feeling like a social pariah\u2014especially if you&amp;#039;ve unknowingly blasted your contacts with a seedy ad or asked for cash\u2014say something. Daniel Post Senning, author of Emily Post&amp;#039;s Manners in a Digital World, suggests sending a straightforward informational email, as you&amp;#039;ll probably be sending it to a mixed audience of colleagues, family and friends. &amp;quot;When you&amp;#039;re talking about something that involves money and deception, clarity trumps humor,&amp;quot; says Senning. 6. Rethink passwords to other accounts. Do you have one go-to password for everything from Twitter to online banking? If so, change each of those logins. &amp;quot;All of them could be at risk if you use the same or similar passwords across the board,&amp;quot; says Beaver. This time, choose something unique for each account. Even if you&amp;#039;ve been diligent about varying your passphrases, reset them anyway. &amp;quot;If your Yahoo or Gmail account is hacked,&amp;quot; says Dr. Thuraisingham, &amp;quot;and there&amp;#039;s malware in the system, it will know all your other information too.&amp;quot; 7. Alert your service provider. You may not hear back, &amp;quot;but it could minimize the chance of someone else getting hit,&amp;quot; says Beaver. Plus, as Senning says, it&amp;#039;s part of being &amp;quot;a good digital citizen.&amp;quot; He explains, &amp;quot;In the same way that good manners in the physical world involve not spreading germs, good manners in the digital world involve not spreading viruses.&amp;quot; For Gmail, head to Google&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;Contact us&amp;quot; page and scroll down to &amp;quot;Report a safety or abuse issue affecting a Google product.&amp;quot; You can reach out to AOL&amp;#039;s customer service team through Help.AOL.com (click &amp;quot;send us a note about your AOL Mail issue&amp;quot;). Yahoo users should go to &amp;quot;Security at Yahoo&amp;quot; and find a section on reporting incidents. For Facebook, the help center is your chief resource. 8. Update your software. It&amp;#039;s so easy to click &amp;quot;Remind Me Later&amp;quot; when an update prompt appears on your screen, but Beaver explains it&amp;#039;s in your best interest to keep things current. &amp;quot;Install the latest operating system patches [or fixes released by software companies] and updates for Java, Adobe Reader and other third-party software, as this is how most malware is spread,&amp;quot; he says. Updating is critical because &amp;quot;the longer software is out, the more time criminals have to find ways to exploit bugs.&amp;quot; 9. Beef up your security. If you use Gmail, Freund recommends setting up two-step verification. &amp;quot;It gives you an extra layer of protection by asking for a numeric code that&amp;#039;s sent to your phone, in addition to your password,&amp;quot; she says. Facebook has a similar feature called login approvals. Another smart move: &amp;quot;Stop clicking links and attachments in emails\u2014even when they&amp;#039;re from trusted sources,&amp;quot; Beaver says. As for exacting revenge on a nemesis that&amp;#039;s wreaked havoc on your social media mojo, play it cool. &amp;quot;Learn from your mistake and move on,&amp;quot; says Beaver. For more must-know cyber-security tips, check out:  How to Avoid Online Scams 9 Things Your IT Person Wants to Tell You "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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