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How Do I Find Who Hacked My Email Account?

Question: I just want to tell you that someone has hacked one of my email IDs and he sent email from my ID to someone else. Now, please tell me how I can find out from which computer and from which place this email has been sent. In other words, how do I find who hacked my email? Your cooperation will be highly appreciated.

What you and I can do is very limited.

When accounts are hacked, folks really want to be able to figure out who did this to them. Where did it happen? What computer were they on? Who are they?

The  short answer is, you’re extremely unlikely to figure out who hacked your email account. There’s almost nothing you can do.

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Law enforcement might

If laws have been broken — if you can involve local law enforcement and they have the time and the expertise to help — then they may have the ability to get more information.

Sometimes, they can even track down an individual.

Several factors make this an extremely rare result:

  • Law enforcement doesn’t have time. They must prioritize other, more serious issues needing their attention.
  • Law enforcement doesn’t have the expertise. While it is getting better, most law enforcement agencies simply don’t have the technical know-how required for these situations.
  • Law enforcement doesn’t have jurisdiction. Hackers are often in other countries, where your law enforcement agencies can’t help.

Even though it’s incredibly important to you, and a personal violation, it’s just not a priority for most law enforcement agencies to help people with hacked accounts.

HackerYou’re on your own

If you’re not able to get outside help tracking down the culprit, I advise that you don’t bother trying. It’ll be a frustrating experience, and as you can gather, the chances of finding anything are slim.

What you can do is focus instead on recovery and prevention.

Begin by reading “Email Hacked? 7 Things You Need to Do Now” to make sure you’ve completely recovered your account. Changing your password is not enough, and often leaves your account in a state that allows the hacker to quickly take it over again. There are several steps you need to take.

Learn from the experience. As best you can, figure out how the hacker got your account in the first place, and take steps to make sure it doesn’t happen again. For starters, follow the steps outlined in Internet Safety: 7 Steps to Keeping Your Computer Safe on the Internet.

Finally, after you’ve secured your account and plugged any leaks, get on with your life.

Let it go.

There’s almost nothing you or I as individuals can do to get the information I know you really want.

Do this

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34 comments on “How Do I Find Who Hacked My Email Account?”

  1. This night mare with a hacker or what ever began over3 yrs ago and it was a trick of the mind thing i never thought i would be hacked soo i tired to ignore all the upside down windows and all the gone mail but little did i really think this person had access to all or any info on my computer. i rarely did more than play a few games then I tried to figure out who was hacking me which only made my life more upset after 3 yrs of seeing things go wrong on my computer i finally was convinced i had a hacker i hired a company to go in and get rid of the hacker and to secure my computer i still have the hacker who ever this is even called my husbands work place all kind of weird phone calls night and day what can we do to secure our lives more than our computer now
    thank you for input
    linda kimmel

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  2. always get people trying to hack my mail!!, with Hotmail they provide hacking attempts info(times of hacking attempts, location, IP Address)if I know the hackers IP address, and by logging into websites that provide info on where the IP address location is ,etc…can this help? and are these accurate info?I found once that the hacking attempt linked to an organization!? what say I call them and tell why you are hacking me!

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  3. My fiance and i have been getting harassed for over 6 months now. It started with text messages from a different phone number each time, with personal information, and untrue made up things in many failed attempts to break us apart. It got so bad and to the point that he had to change his phone number. Now it has progressed to someone hacking my email account and sending him emails that we need to break it off. I’m tempted to go the police. Is this a possibility?
    Is there something they will do to help me?

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  4. my girlfriend has put some kind of apps in my phone where she knows everything I’m doing. some kind of virus. please help me

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    • Resetting the phone to factory state should clean up all malware. You can Google how to do that for your specific phone.

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  5. Someone Created an account on a dating site with my college email. I know its on a public server and the site does not require email verification. Is there any way I can track it down on my own?

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  6. Hi, I have a friend that has had his yahoo email account hacked. An email was sent from his email account and that email is now being used against him. He is trying to figure out how and when it got hacked. In trying to do this he came across a company, Mayas Services, and they were able to find out that it was hacked and the dates they found matched the dates of when the email was sent out (he had not told them about the dates) and was able to tell location too. Unfortunately he was told shortly after that Mayas is a fraudulent service. But if they were able to do it then I guess it’s possible, right? Do you know if there is a reliable company that can do this?

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    • That sounds pretty suspicious to me. Especially if that particular company contacted him after the hack – it seems likely that they were the hackers and squeezing some money out of him. My recommendation would be to find a local computer store with good techs that you can sit with and look them in the eye. I would not trust anyone “found” on the internet for this sort of investigation.

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      • Hi Connie, thank you for your reply.

        Sorry I should clarify. He found Mayas after a web search and so he contacted Mayas. He didn’t actually give them any of his login credentials to yahoo or his computer but Mayas required remote access to his computer and he could see everything that they did while remotely logged in. He was already logged into his yahoo account and he did see them check his online settings but he said that the information they found that his email had been hacked by other users was from files on his local computer. The dates they gave corroborated the dates the emails were apparently sent (he hadn’t informed Mayas about those dates).

        He said he wished he had recorded it so that he could find this information himself but unfortunately he didn’t. Unfortunately I have no idea where this information could be held.

        So he needs a way to show that his email was hacked during those days when that email was sent. The company making charges against him and that are showing this evidence have shown images of the emails that were sent. He has appealed that he didn’t send them but they have said that the only way to verify that is if he can show his email account was hacked during those dates. His lawyers have contacted Yahoo but unfortunately yahoo can’t help – but apparently Mayas was able to get this information from some files from his local computer.

        Any further guidance would be much appreciated. Thank you!

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    • That’s not a bad tool to determine the general area of the IP address, but not for finding out who the IP address belongs to. That would only give a rough estimate of where the IP address is located. Today it got mine pretty close, only 15 miles away. I’ve seen it off by several hundred miles in some cases.
      What can people tell from my IP address?

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    • That tool is absolutely useless it gives the location of the ISP who owns the IP address not the user of the IP address . I have a fixed IP address and live in Hobart (capital of Tasmania). when I use this tool it gives my location as Launceston some 200 odd km’s away. Launceston is one of the locations of where my ISP resides My IS happens to be the biggest communications company in Australia and has offices everywhere. Sometimes using tools like this I am located in another state. The only time a tool like this can get anywhere near accurate is if you are checking for an IP address that uses WiFi and even then it is iffy.

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  7. Hello was wondering if you could help me get back into my Facebook Account?? I have had the account about 20 years. I have been locked out of my account and its asking for my Identity?? I have never been asked this kind of information before to get on Facebook or into any of my Email Accounts???? Please could you help me someway to get back in???? I have done everything!!!??? Please if there is anything you can do for me I would really appreciate it!!! I would like to have all my pictures, friends, messages, ect. back!!! Please if you can help me this is my Email Address and new Phone Number {removed}@yahoo.com {removed}@Hotmail.com {removed}@aol.com {removed}@gmail.com {removed} Thank you and God Bless!!!! ~Ruthie Fink~

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  8. I have partial email of a person who hacked my Google account, happens to be a gmail user him or herself, Google sent it to me when I sent them a forgot password message since I could’t’ log in, they said the password reminder will be sent to that email, which isn’t mine. part of it is hdden by asteriks as is Google policy, I want to inform Google but dont know how to.

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  9. so, In my experience, one security trick is to use something like an Ipod 5. That works for me at least. they somehow have such bad security that you never need to relogin into your email account. this means that you have the ability to email the hacker. however, in my case, this confrontation may only work because its a kid. I know this because I used this email years ago to play minecraft, and for a kid I redownloaded it, and found my username was changed. reletively speaking, this kind of hacker is rare, but either way it is possible to confront through an ironic conversation with yourself. and yes, the email I am using here is the one of which was hacked.

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  10. This is someone who has multiple accounts, and I have been tortured by a hacker who has been embedded in all of my electronics for 6 years. I’ve tried everything the pro’s tell you. But the longer the hacker has been hacking the more control s/he has gained. I cannot get the FBI to talk with me. I should mention I’m seriously ill, disabled from it. And want my life back!

    Reply
  11. Someone has been trying to hack all of my accounts including my email and amazon, icloud, and who know’s what other accounts and they sent an email from my phone to someone else and I can’t seem to keep them out of my email since I’ve changed the password more than once, I changed the security question and answer, I’ve factory reset my phone and computer but it doesn’t seem to be working and I don’t really know what to do. I tried backtracking the email and it didn’t work too well so I’m lost. Is there anything I can do?

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  12. I keep getting notifications that my account is being hacked from China and I keep getting emailed about adult dating site saying my account has been confirmed but I have never done this so I’m lost on what to do is it possible my Gmail has been compromised?

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  13. Just wanted to point out a related issue…

    I know accounts really do get hacked, but what your original poster described as “they sent an email from my ID” could just as easily describe spoofing, i.e. the email did NOT come from my account but techniques have been used to make it look as though it did.

    Spoofing might be used to make it more likely that someone will respond to a phishing message, or maybe so that I’ll get the blame for spam being sent by someone else, for example. There are technical measures that can help reduce spoofing but for most home users it may not be possible or be worth the effort.

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    • Mark’s point on Nov 11, 2019 is spot-on. A lot of people who think their email accounts have been hacked really haven’t been hacked, but rather just spoofed by someone else putting in the return address the “hacked” person’s email address.

      This is a similar scenario to caller-ID spoofing where a unscrupulous person will use available tools to spoof the number that Caller-ID shows when they call someone. This is so prevalent, that I don’t answer any calls from numbers I don’t have in my contacts, or am not expecting. If it’s a real person, they’ll leave a message.

      Similarly, a lot of Facebook “hacked” situations are just someone with a public profile, that a “bad guy” will just take and copy to a new Facebook account with the same name and profile picture, and then since the victim’s friends list is usually public, just do friend requests to them from the new copy account. This has happened to several friends of mine, but this false account stuff stopped as soon as they changed their Facebook profile from public to private as to who can see their friends’ lists.

      Changing passwords will not have any effect in these situations, since the “bad guy” doesn’t really have true access to a person’s account information, just what is viewable.

      Reply
  14. someone deleted my personal email and i need to find the ip address because they used it blackmail me through my medical records

    Reply

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