Are your contacts getting emails that you didn’t send or being flooded with spam messages sent from your account? Are you receiving a lot of “bounced” e-mails from random addresses you don’t know? If so, it’s possible that your account has been compromised.

When an account is compromised it means it has been accessed by someone other than you. This can happen because someone figured out your password (without your knowledge or consent) and was able to log in to your account.

If you think your account has been compromised, you should:

1. Change your password: If you are still able to access your email account, change your password immediately. Make it stronger. Use a mixture of numbers, lowercase and uppercase letters and punctuation. That means no birthdays, addresses, kids’ names, dogs’ names, maiden names, or street address.
2. Check your other accounts: If you are accessing other accounts on the same computer it is possible that those accounts maybe compromised as well. Change the passwords for those as well.
3. Inform your contact list: You may not need to contact everyone spammed by your compromised e-mail. Especially if malware was attached, you should send word to your contact list to delete those messages ASAP.