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How can I tell if my email account has been hacked?

If a hacker gets access to your email account they will usually use it to send out spam. If you’re using the same sign-in for other websites - such as online banking, social media or App Stores - they could use those accounts to steal your money or attack other people.

The first sign that something’s wrong is when your friends and family start asking why you sent them a strange email with suspicious attachments or links to websites.

What should I do now?

The first thing you should do is run a complete scan of your computer using up-to-date security software.

You should then change the password for any account that uses the same password as your email. It's as if you've lost a key - you should change all the locks that use that key. Make sure you use a strong password for all your online accounts.

This is also a good time to remind your friends and family to be aware of suspicious emails, even when they come from someone they know. It may be a good idea to send an email to let everyone know your account was hacked.

How did this happen?

The most common ways a hacker gets access to your account are:

Following a few tips can help keep you protected:

If you receive a suspicious email from a friend or think their account may have been hacked, you can report it using the “My friend’s been hacked” feature in Outlook.com.

Microsoft helps you do that in a few ways:

Other ways to report junk emails are outlined here:

We often receive reports from people asking what they can do if they think someone else has their Skype name and password. If you believe that your account has been compromised, you can find out what you can do from the following sites.

If you want to report abusive behavior in Skype, for example an unknown contact who keeps sending you links to malware, see this page from Skype:

How do I report abuse by someone on Skype

If you want to report that your Skype account has been taken over by another person, see this page:

What can I do if someone has taken over my account

Skype also offers tips on how to identify fake emails pretending to be from them at this page:

How do I know that an email is really from Skype

And just for good measure, if you believe your Outlook.com account has been compromised, see this page:

My Outlook.com account has been hacked

Here’s what you can do if you think your Facebook account has been compromised.

If you think that you or your friend's Facebook details have been stolen, see this page from Facebook:

Hacked accounts

For tips from Facebook on how to identify suspicious emails and notifications about your account, see this page:

Suspicious emails and notifications

If you believe your Outlook.com account has been compromised, see this page:

My Outlook account has been hacked

And remember, just because we're used to malware and scams coming through email doesn't mean they can't come through other social channels, too.

Have you ever had a Java exploit detected on your computer? Exploits are malicious code that attempts to exploit a vulnerability in a specific program (in this case, Java), and are one of the most insidious threat-types we observe. Java exploits are particularly common, but there are a few ways you can help protect yourself from these threats:

A number of government agencies from across the world have disrupted “Microsoft imposter” scams. The scam involves criminals pretending to be from Microsoft who call and inform you that your computer is infected with malware. To “clean” your computer, the criminals then request a fee or remote access to your computer (or both).

Based on the feedback we’ve received from you we know this scam was widespread and extremely frustrating for every person it affects.

However, it’s likely there are many more scammers out there – either continuing with this scam, or devising new ways of stealing your information and your money. As we wrote before,

For more information on computer fraud, visit the Microsoft Safety and Security Center:

One of our most often reported detections in our telemetry each month is the rather innocuously named HackTool:Win32/Keygen. Win32/Keygen is the name we give to programs that purport to activate software without an appropriate license. These programs claim to be able to do things like:

Basically, these programs exist to enable software piracy. Software piracy is of itself a serious issue, and you can read more about it our software piracy information and piracy prevention pages. However, according to our telemetry, it seems that using pirated software might have undesired consequences, and of the 2 million computers that report a Win32/Keygen detection in a typical month, just under 50 percent of these computers also report at least one other malware infection. It is also worth noting that some of the most dangerous and difficult to recover from malware is commonly distributed masquerading as a keygen, such as Win32/Sirefef.

There are a number of reasons as to why we might see this kind of pattern, but the key takeaway here is that there may be a serious hidden cost to getting software for free.

Have you ever visited a website that tried to install unwanted programs or even malware to your computer? Or maybe you received an email or visited a site that contained misleading content that tried to scam you in some way. Have you ever wondered how you can report these suspicious sites and content to someone so that other users are less likely to be affected? In case you were wondering, you can report this information to Microsoft.

Microsoft uses these reports to help protect you and other users from malicious content. After being verified, this information is used by the SmartScreen Filter in Internet Explorer and Outlook.com to:

To help other users avoid malicious content and report a website or email you believe to be suspicious:

You can find more information on reporting suspicious websites or email at the Microsoft safety and security center.