You might be tempted
I think my boyfriend/girlfriend/spouse is cheating on me. I want to hack into their email/WhatsApp/Facebook/other account and find out what he/she/they is doing behind my back. Can you help me?
Can you get me the password for *****@hotmail.com/yahoo.com/facebook.com? This person’s been saying really bad things about me and I want to hack in and teach him/her/them a lesson.
I’ve lost the password for *****@hotmail.com. Could you please find it and send it to *****@hotmail.com? It’s really my account. Honest.
A family member has passed away, and I’d like to retrieve whatever was in his/her/their email account before it gets deleted for lack of use. But I don’t have the password. Can you get it for me?
These are oversimplifications of many variations on the same basic question.
People want to hack into other people’s accounts, or even their own, for a variety of reasons. Some sound perfectly legitimate. Others, not so much. And others are just blatant attempts at theft, harassment, or revenge.
What’s really scary is that I get these requests every day.
My answer is always the same.
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Hacking into an account is wrong, and is never the answer. To retain access to your own accounts, secure them to keep from losing them, and add recovery information to get back in if you do. Keep the recovery information up to date. Back up the information in your account so as to never lose anything, and consider a paid account with real support for when problems arise.
No. Just … no
For the record, my answer is no.
- I cannot and will not retrieve a password for you.
- I cannot and will not hack an account for you.
- I cannot and will not help you hack some account.
I have many reasons for taking this position, but the biggest reason is very simple:
Hacking into someone else’s account without their permission is wrong.
I can’t be any clearer.
Why not?
Being wrong is not the only reason for my position.
- It’s unethical.
- It’s very likely illegal.
- It’s almost certainly immoral.
- It destroys trust.
- Revenge is stupid and childish.
- You could be lying to me.
- I literally don’t have the ability to do it.
Legitimate requests
What if you have a legitimate need?
I still cannot help you.
I don’t have access to what I need to prove you have the right to access the account. I don’t have the technology to get or set your password. Only the service does. Only Microsoft can reset a Microsoft account password; only Google can do it for Google accounts; only Facebook can do it for Facebook. You get the idea.
Go to the service in question, and only the service in question, for account recovery options.
Legitimate requests with no available support
What if you have a legitimate request, but the service provides no means to act on it?
First: that’s typical for free services. All I can say is, you get what you pay for.
Second: if there is no supported way to get access, or the supported ways don’t work, you can’t get access to the account. Period. You are out of luck.
If you’re trying to hack back into your own account, you’ve probably lost the account forever. It’s no longer your account, or it never was in the first place.
Anyone who says they can reset or retrieve your password or hack into someone else’s account for you should not be trusted.
In extreme cases, the service you’re attempting to get into may listen to lawyers and officers of the court, if you have the legal standing and can afford to go that route. You might try that approach if you think it’s worth it.
The real solutions
Don’t get yourself into this situation.
- Secure your own account to keep it from getting hacked.
- Add recovery information so you can get back in if it does, and keep the recovery information up to date.
- Back up the information in your account so you won’t lose anything if you do lose the account.
- Consider a paid account with real support for when problems arise.
Hacking is never the answer
Be it your account or someone else’s, hacking is never the answer.
Don’t try.
And don’t bother asking me.
A note on comments
Because of the subject matter, this article attracts comment spam from individuals offering their “hacking services”. We proactively remove those comments within 24-48 hours, but if you see such a comment, ignore it. Chances are it’s a scam. Even if it isn’t, it’s unethical and illegal.
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My main computer downloads all my email using gmail’s POP3 server and archives it on my local hard drive. I also leave it on the gmail servers. I also have several other computers and a smartphone that get my mail using gmail’s IMAP server. So if something happened to me, my family should be able to get into my email.
I am a member of a social anxiety forum and I actually saw a thread where someone was boasting of hacking into her bully’s Facebook and Twitter accounts. She had intended to delete the data from these accounts and generally ruin the bully’s life. There were other members egging her on and encouraging her to do damage to the accounts. I stepped in and told her that what she was doing was illegal and that she could get into trouble with the law if she was reported. She did not seem to be at all concerned with her behaviour and was not worried about getting found out about it. A moderator then locked the thread on the basis that it was encouraging illegal activity.
You are right. At that point she becomes the bully.
I checked her profile out again recently and she has a few posts from earlier this year, so I guess nothing will really happen to her. I am just speculating, here.
Hi Leo,
I have been reading you for what seems like many years. I just saw the one about “How can I hack into someone’s account” and of course I agree wholeheartedly with your response. This is just a comment or story for you. My wife’s younger brother just passed away after 10 years of being housebound due to arthritis and other illnesses. During this time he bought a lot of electronic gear including probably 5 computers and 5 guitars, TV’s etc. When we went to the funeral his wife was offering us all kinds of stuff including iPads etc. He had new laptops and tablets still in the boxes. Even a flatscreen TV!! I think he must have had lots of money and she said he was adicted to the shopping channel. We would not take anything because we feel she needs time to think about what she is doing. But another relative did accept a new laptop. The deceased had used a thumbprint to lock the laptops he had. So now his brother has a new laptop which he desperately needed but can’t get into. I’m sure he can take it to a professional and have it unlocked. But if I were to put myself in that position, I don’t think I would want to see another persons personal life in their laptop. I feel like I would be invading their privacy even though they are dead. The thumbprint was there for a reason. Just my feeling.
Thanks for all the great tips over the years and please keep it up.
Tom
In a case like that, I’d do a fresh OS installation. There are ways to change the password and get in in many cases but who knows if there is any malware on the machine. If you do want to get in to see their information, for example, valuable photos. See this article for resetting Windows passwords.
How Do I Get the Password for a Computer I Purchased at a Garage Sale?
There is this youtube video that shows you how to get password from certain porn site. To get it clear no i have no meaning in hacking or anything, i am just being curious. Can someone really hack porn site if they know their password and get all the logs? Is it that easy?
No, it’s not that easy, as long as the site (any site – there’s nothing special about porn sites) has appropriate security.
I wanna log into an old account from grade school and I remember my username not my password and its killing me iv tried every combination i can think of idk what to do tho?
If there’s no “I forgot my password” link associated with an email address you currently have control over, then the only think I can think of is to contact the school.
Holy crap !! After reading this very good article by Leo, and then reading the comments here, I just can’t believe the requests for the info that Leo stated that he cannot, or will not provide. This news letter is a learning tool, and it is obvious that a lot of people still refuse to learn. Sad.
You should have seen the ones we deleted :-)
I can well imagine, lol.
While going through the comments today, I found and spammed a hacking offer. We seem to get one or two daily on various articles. “Chances are it’s a scam. Even if it isn’t, it’s at least unethical, and probably illegal.” Chances are exactly 100% from my experience :-(
My wife and I have a lot of passwords in a shared LastPass folder so if need be, can get into each other’s account. We’ve also setup LastPass emergency access on each other’s account with 12 hour windows.
I lost my Yahoo Mail account when my ISP dumped Yahoo in favor of AOL. The instructions for transferring emails to AOL were very easy, just click a button and everything would move over. And indeed it did work. The emails in inbox and the older ones that had been sorted into files were received. I notified my correspondents of the change of address. So far so good.
What they neglected to mention was that they had made no provision for emails that arrived afterwards and that the operation of transferring the existing emails permanently locked you out of your account. On the Yahoo site I was able to see a count of emails being received without any ability to do anything about it. Before clicking that button you were supposed to set up forwarding with Yahoo but AOL did not bother to mention that. And since my Yahoo Mail account was paid for through my ISP there was no support to contact.
I’d very much like to meet a hacker who could show me how to hack into my old Yahoo account just to set up forwarding and retrieve the dozens of emails that have arrived since I was locked out.
If you find a hacker who offers to do that for you, I guarantee he is a charlatan who will steal your money or worse, hack your computer and/or accounts.
Yes, thank you Mark, I understand that. Just wishful thinking. Great article. ;)
Be careful what you wish for. I answered it that was, because there is so much spam offering to hack accounts, I want to take to opportunity to warn anyone reading this that these offers to hack are a scam.
It’s rare to the point of nonexistent to find a hacker who can hack email accounts, Facebook, or other major websites. If it were possible, you’d read about massive hacking of those sites all the time. Everyone who has their accounts hacked are either hacked by people they know who have access to their devices or know enough to guess their passwords, or people who use short or easily guessable passwords.
We are constantly deleting comments on articles which offer to hack. It’s one of the most common kinds of forum spam. I’m just warning anyone who might see those comments that they are scams.
Definitely Mark. Two more “offers” were just deleted out of this post. So it only depends on how fast we get to deleting them. Don’t ever answer to things like that!
I just caught another two today. The English was horrific. One began:
“My wife was so smooth at hiding his infidelity so I had no proof for months,”
Unless he was misgendering his transgender wife?
In the Gmail settings you can set up someone who will get a notice if you do not access your account for three months. It will give that person full access to your account so that they can download your email, etc. When they finish, the account will either be deleted or can be deleted, I forget which. I set that up a while ago, when prompted to do so by the Google Security Review. I think this is a good idea and should relieve some of the genuine anxieties out there. Just be sure to update this if you change executors.
I’m old enough now to have dealt several times with getting into the computer(s) of people who died.
It’s an interesting, if emotional, puzzle.
Just last month I helped a friend whose wife died leaving a locked iPhone, two iPads, and a laptop.
Fortunately he remembered her main email account password. With just that account I was able to reset passwords for other accounts including the Apple ID.
The toughest was the iPhone which had been locked after too many failed passcode attempts. Fortunately there had been an iCloud backup and once I recovered the Apple ID I was able to restore it.
Having the iPhone working let me get into other accounts that used two-factor authentication.
As part of all this I gained access to her Facebook account and assigned myself as the legacy contact. [I then requested “Memorialization” where Facebook changes the page to be “In Memory Of…”]
Out of this I realize how important it is to ensure that SOMEONE knows enough to get into your accounts.
I turn 70 at my next birthday and this is an issue for more and more people I know.
People give out a house key to certain trusted individuals; child, friend, neighbor, even the cleaning lady. Even if you have backups, why not give a copy of userids and passwords (and security questions) to a trusted individual? I suppose you could keep one email account a secret if you have some reason to do that.
If you trust people with a key to your house, why not trust them with a password?
This is what I have done. Create a document which is kept in a safe place, but where a family member can find it. Contains key info to access my PCs, my online accounts and my financial accounts, including how top gain physical access to my safe deposit box. If kept confidential by all parties, such documents can help preserve access if something happens where I can’t tell people how to get in. This should be part of a Will or Last Wishes document for every family member, but no one else seems to have done this in my family. My Dad had a little black book, but his was the last generation to keep a hard copy.
On a related subject … and if this is too off-topic feel free to remove it … I learned that on a major site, a very technically proficient … (your comment that revenge is stupid, childish and unethical applies here) very bright individual whom I never thought would be capable of something like this, got mixed up in a group dispute. They obtained a lot of personal information of someone whose screen name was only their first name and given location was a large city. They were able to get their address, phone #, name of ex-spouse, location of employment, name of parents and were disseminating this information in private chatrooms. Upon this being made public, massive reporting did not cause the service to suspend their account! I still cannot understand that, nor how they were able to get all that from just a first name and city! I find that very concerning.
Ahem… Isn’t I’ve Lost the Password to My Windows Administrator Account. How Do I Get it Back? a form of hacking into an account…???
In a way, yes. While this article is mostly discussing online account (and the never-ending stream of requests I get), breaking into a Windows computer can be viewed similarly.
In the case of Windows it’s important people know the technique exists. Of course the information could be used for evil (in which case it would be wrong), it can also be a lifesaver at times.
Yes. Any Windows version since XP with a local login. For computers with a Windows account login, you can reset the password by going to Outlook.com and resetting your Windows account password.
It’s the same, only different :-) . This method only works if you have the computer in your possession. In most cases, it’s the computer owner who has possession. Unfortunately, it can be used for hacking a computer.
Laurence brought up the issue of accessing the accounts of deceased relatives. The best way to address this is pre-planning.
I have developed an ICE (In Case of Emergency) Plan for my wife, which includes the location of and password to the software password vault. When I’m gone, or hospitalized, she will have access to whatever she needs.
If you haven’t already done this for your loved ones, please do! It’s a good way to say “I love you”.
See also: Preparing For The Ultimate Disaster
thank you, I know this could be illegal but sometimes you neeeed to hack into something. I am a mother and i am looking and protecting my child i want to make sure he’s okay.
If you mean get into your son’s computer, that’s possible but if you reset the password, he’ll be locked out.
I’ve Lost the Password to My Windows Administrator Account. How Do I Get it Back?
If the password is short enough, running a rainbow table program such as OPH Crack would reveal the password.
How do I determine, not reset, the Windows administrator password?
Neither of these methods would work if he’s using a Microsoft account and PIN to log in.
Well, what if your account has been hacked, can you just hacked it back you can regain access to your account? Recently, my IG was hacked and I have tried so many ways to get it back, but I can’t anymore. They changed the password and email to the account but the username is the same. And I tried all those steps and contacting Instagram itself and nothing has been done. What should I do?
If you’ve tried all the supported approaches for account recovery, and none of them work, then it’s no longer your account. My advice is move on. And no, hacking is never the answer.
Hi, I was wondering how is that the hackers get into my account, changed all, my password, email, and so forth when I ask Facebook to help me, they send the recovering code to the hacker’s email address, that helps him/they not me. now I received a note from Facebook saying that they are suspending my account for good in 20 days. so, what I do now?
This happens. If the Facebook account recovery process can’t be made to work, then I don’t have any alternatives for you. It’s not your account any more.