How To Check and Secure Email for your Outlook.com account

‍

Step 1: Change your password.

If you are concerned that your email account has been hacked, it is important to login to your account as soon as possible. Once logged in, you can change your password to disrupt a cybercriminal's access and regain control over your email account.

If a cybercriminal has changed your password, skip to Step 1A o recover your email account.

1. Visit https://account.microsoft.com and select Sign in in the top right corner of the pacge. Enter your email address and select Next.
   ‍
2. Enter your password and select Next.
   ‍
3. Once logged in, select Profile icon (top right) and then select My Microsoft Account or My Account.
   ‍
4. On the top menu bar, select Security.
   ‍
5. Under Security Basics, on the Password security tile, select Change my password.
   ‍
6. Enter your current password, your new password, confirm and select Save.

By changing your password, all other sessions will be prompted for the new password which may take a few minutes.

After you have reset your password, skip to Step 2: Update your recovery details.

Step 1A: Recovery Your Email Account

Recovery of your email account is only required if a cybercriminal has changed your password. If you have completed the previous step, you can skip this one.

• Note: that this recovery process will require you to confirm your identity by providing either your phone number or a recovery email address.

1. Visit https://account.microsoft.com and select Sign in in the top right corner of the page. Enter your email address and select Next.
2. Select Forgot password?
3. If you have access to an external Email or Mobile phone to receive the recovery code, select the approprate method and proceed Step 4 or 1A. If you don't have access to any of these select, I don't have any of these and proceed to Step 5 of 1A.
4. If you have a recovery code, enter it and select Use recovery code. Proceed to Step: Update your account recovery details.
5. if you do not have any recovery accounts or a recovery code, select No which will begin the application process to recover your email address.

You may be require to provide an alternative email address to which a recovery code/email will be sent to and to complete an audio or visual CAPTCHA.

Provide as much information as possible as this will help you recover your account.

It may take serveral days or weeks to receive an outcome as your request is reviewed.

Step 2: Update your account recovery details

In some cases, a cybercriminal may change the recovery details of your email account.

They can use this as a way to regain access to the email account even after you have changed your password. Be sure to check your account recovery details are linked to either a recovery email address or recovery mobile phone.

1. Select your Profile in the top right corner and select My Microsoft Account.
2. Select Security in the top menu bar. You have to re-enter your password to verify if you can make changes to sensitive information.
3. Under Security Basics, on the Advanced security options or Security contact info tile, select Get started or Update my info.
4. Review the recovery details and select Remove for any security contact info you want to remove.

Note: if only one recovery mechanism is listed, and it is the one you want to delete, you will need to add a valid recovery mechanism first. To do this select Add Security info. This can either can be a mobile number or an alternative email address.

Step 3: Sign out of all other sessions.

Cyber criminals may be logged into your email account after you have signed in.

By signing out of all sessions, you will disrupt a cybercriminal's access and regain control over your email account.

1. Select your Profile icon in the top right corner and select My Microsoft Account.
2. Select Security in the top menubar. You may have to re-enter your password to verify you can make changes to sensitive information.
3. Select Get started on the Advaned security options tile.
4. Scroll down to Sign me out and select the Sign me out button. You will be prompted again to confirm whether or not you want to sign out. Select Sign me out.

Note: that all account sessions on all browsers and devices will be signed out within 24 hours. Once completely signed out of all sessions and devices, sign back in again using your device to continue securing your Microsoft account.

Step 4: Enable Multi-Factor Authentication

Turning on multi-factor authentication is the most important defence against cybercriminals gaining access to your email account.

Muli-factor authentication makes it harder for cybercriminals to gain access to your email account by making them guess two piece of information rather than one (such as a password anda constantly changing PIN)

Step 5: Check Account Mail Settings

Cybercriminals will sometimes set up 'forwarding rules' to send themselves a copy of emails coming into or leaving your email account.

You should check your email account to see if cybercriminals have setup forwarding rules and delete any you don't recognise.

1. Select Outlook in the navigation bar on the left.
2. Select Settings (cog icon) in the top right corner.
3. Scroll down and select View all Outlook settings.
4. In the Mail sidebar menu, select Rules in the sub-menu and view all the rules. Check for any rules you don't recognise and remove them. To remove any rules, select the delete icon (trash icon) and select OK.
5. Next, select the Sync Email in the sub-menu and scroll down to view POP and IMAP.

Step 6: Check Account Mail Forwarding Settings

"POP and IMAP are protocols that allow emails to be accessed through other applications, such as Microsoft Outlook, Apple Mail and Mozilla Thunderbird. Cybercriminals sometimes use these as another method of accessing your email account, as it can allow them to bypass some security measures such as multi-factor authentication.
Check to see if any of your emails are being access by any suspicious external email clients or applications via POP. If you don't use an email application and only use an internet browser to access your emails, consider disabling POP as it can be used by cybercriminals to access your emails from another application.

IMAP should refer to a server relating to Outlook or Microsoft Office"

1. Next, select Forwarding in the sub-menu. From her you can check to see if any of your emails are being forwarded to another account. Check that Enable Forwarding is unticked, or if forwarding is turned on, it is to an account you expected.

If forwarding is turned on to an account, you don't recognise then remove the address and turn it off by unticking the box.

Step 7: Check Third Party Application Access

Have you ever linked your Microsoft account to a third-party service? Many websites and applications can use this method to avoid having to create a new user account.

However, the connection this creates between your email account and the website / application is a common way for hackers to gain access to your email account.

Check if there are any apps or services that have access to your account and remove any that you don't recognise or no longer require.

1. Select your Profile icon (top right), select My Microsoft Account or My Account.
2. Select Privacy in the top menu bar.
3. Scroll down to More privacy settings and under Apps and Services, select View app access details.
4. This lists all the apps that can access data related to your account. Select Edit, the select Remove these permissions for any that you didn't configure yourself.

Step 8: Check Login activity

Your login activity is a history of when and where someone has logged into your email account. Regularly review your login activity to check if your email account has been accessed at unusual locations.

1. Select your Profile icon (top right), select My Microsoft Account or My Account.
2. Select Security in the top menu bar. You may have to re-enter your password to verify you can make changes to sensitive information.
3. Under Security Basics, on the Sign-in activity tile, select View my activity.
4. Here you can check the time and location of the logins into youraccount to verify that your email account has not been accessed at unusual times or from unusual locations.

If you see any suspicious activity since your last password change, select the drop-down arrow for that session and select Secure your account to change your password. Consider using a unique strong passphrase as your password.

Note: that if you do go ahead and Secure your Account, you will need to verify your identity and change your password. This will automatically log you out of all other existing sessions.

Step 9: Check Impact of Unauthorised Access

Once you have made sure cybercriminals don't have access to your email account, you may want to conider checking your email folders, specifically your Send, Draft and Bin Folders.

This will help you assess what actions a cybercriminal may have taken when they accessed your email account.

If someone has hacked into your email account, they may have tried to reset passwords for other online accounts that arelinked to that email address. These could be for banking and finance, social media or other accounts. Check for any password reset emails.

1. To check sent items, select Sent items in the side menu.

Search for emails that you did not send and take note of the recipient, whether attachments were includede, what the email was requesting and when it was sent.

Compare any unusual activity times with the time the email was sent. Check login activity everytime you become aware that a criminal contacted someone from your email account.

2. To check deleted items, select Deleted items in the side menu. You can recover delete items by selecting Recover items deleted from this folder. Undertake the same steps taken for your other folders, especially Drafts and Spam.

Security Tips

Check Saved Passwords

Have you ever saved your passwords usuing your web browser?

If you were signed into a Chrome web browser and save your username and password then those credentials can be accessed from your Google account.

If a cybercriminal has accessed your account, they may also have accessed your saved passwords. We recommend changing any saved account password that are store on you Google account.

Check Other Accounts

If you used the same password for your email account and any other accounts, these may be no longer secure.

You should complete the following steps to help you keep your other accounts secure:

• Change the password on accounts that shared the same password.
• Enable multi-factor authentication where possible on these accounts.
• Change the passwords to unique strong passphrases uf multi-factor authentication isn't available.

Use A Password Manager

Password managers (which can also be used to store passphrases as well) enable a good cyber security habits.

Having unique passphrase for every valuable account may sound overwhelming; however using a password manager to save your passphrases will free you of the burden of remembering which passphrase goes where.

A lot of web browsers provide an in-built password manager. You might have noticed the pop-up window asking to store your password when logging into accounts. Password managers are also sold separatelu, however, quality and security may vary.

When using a password manager:

• conduct research to ensure the password manager is from a reputable vendor.
• conduct research to ensure the password manager is maintained by the vendor with regular security updates.
• protect the password manager with its own strong and memorable passphrase.

You may choose to keep track of your passphrases in a notebook rather than a password manager. No matter how you keep track of your passphrases, ensure you have a secure storage method.