# How to keep hackers at bay **URL:** \ **Category:** Africa\ **Created:** [June 2, 2012, 7:00pm UTC](https://forum.orgones.co.uk/t/how-to-keep-hackers-at-bay/1375 "2012-06-02T19:00:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![BenedictOrkyns](https://forum.orgones.co.uk/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/9dc877/32.png) [@BenedictOrkyns](https://forum.orgones.co.uk/u/BenedictOrkyns)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2012, 7:00pm UTC](https://forum.orgones.co.uk/t/how-to-keep-hackers-at-bay/1375/1 "2012-06-02T19:00:00Z")
We are either victims of hacking or we hear ordeals of friends and colleagues whose accounts have been cracked. You know your account has been compromised when people listed in your e-mail contacts report being flooded with spam messages sent from your account. Or, you start receiving a bevy of “bounced” e-mails from random addresses you don’t know. Sometimes you are not able to log into your account or change its settings, or you’ve discovered the settings have been altered. You attempt to use e-mail, and find it has been blocked by your provider. In most cases, when you are hacked, your password will no longer work for your e-mail account. And if your account is blocked, it is probably because your account was spewing out spam by the millions, forcing your provider to shut it down until you regain control. But this should not incapacitate you for long. All web-based email services such as Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo Mail have password recovery options which you should use as soon as you are aware that your account has been compromised. Most of the time by using the password recovery/reset feature you should be able to regain access to your account. You can get instructions on how to reset your password and regain your account from their email respective company’s website. Once you have regained access to your account, the first thing you should do is change your password. Choose a strong and unique password. A strong password is recommended to have at least eight characters which includes both letters and numbers and also other characters such as ! @#$%^. You also must also put in place a hedge around your account to ensure that you are not an easy prey next time. While there aren’t any hard and fast figures on what the number one cause of e-mail infiltration is, the overarching theme usually points to one extremely weak link: user behaviour. One reason spam is still so prevalent is because it actually works. Many people open a spam message, read it, and are tempted by whatever wares or schemes are offered. You don’t need to be naive to have your account compromised; you will only have to be briefly caught off guard; so remain vigilant and trust your instincts on anything that looks suspicious. Generally, a hacker will use your account to automatically post links on each of your friends’ walls. Benedict. ---
**Author:** ![Braikar](https://forum.orgones.co.uk/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/7ea924/32.png) [@Braikar](https://forum.orgones.co.uk/u/Braikar)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2012, 7:00pm UTC](https://forum.orgones.co.uk/t/how-to-keep-hackers-at-bay/1375/2 "2012-06-02T19:00:24Z")
Choose a strong and unique password. A strong password is recommended to have at least eight characters which includes both letters and numbers and also other characters such as ! That’s good, but if you still have a Trojan on your computer while changing password, it will be useless, the trojan will get the new password anyway and nothing will change. One thing to know is to not use Norton antivirus! That antivirus in my opinion is a virus itself! How many times have I had people coming to me telling me their computers are not working properly… Everytime they had Norton [Image Can Not Be Found] You run a virus check Norton detects nothing wrong, you unistall Norton and install a new antivirus and a new scan there shows hundreds of viruses (more precisely trojans). Norton allows trojan to remain on computers! Best antiviruses for windows I know are Kaspersky, Avast and AVG, avg is free for a basic protection so I’d recommend that one. Kaspersky is not free but provide a free scanning tool up to date. Most certainly do not use Norton, ever!! Anyone with Norton, remove that antivirus, it allows trojans to run freely on your pc (windows), so it’s no surprise that accounts get hacked. If there are spams sent randomly to all contacts that’s most certainly the work of a trojan rampant of the computer. Best is to switch to linux, fedora, ubuntu, mint linux etc. there are so many variants which are all great for simple uses and quite easy to install. You can even run it from a CD without ever installing it. Anyway if someone is on windows and has Norton, get rid of it and install AVG(free) in the meantime. Just a clue, most big companies have either Avast, Kaspersky or AVG, I’ve never seen a big company with norton for their antivirus… ---
**Author:** ![OwuorChris](https://forum.orgones.co.uk/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/o/c6cbf5/32.png) [@OwuorChris](https://forum.orgones.co.uk/u/OwuorChris)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2012, 7:00pm UTC](https://forum.orgones.co.uk/t/how-to-keep-hackers-at-bay/1375/3 "2012-06-02T19:00:40Z")
I do appreciate what my brother Benedict and Braikar commented on the effective ways of protecting our accounts from Hacking, i do believe that following the right procedure will keep us safe for sometimes to avoid hackers for it’s true that these people who harked other people’s mails are IT experts who knows several techniques of acrobating mails in several concepts. Chris