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5 Million Gmail Usernames, Passwords Hacked! What to Do Now?

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Gmail Hacker

The news that five million Gmail usernames and passwords were stolen alarmed many in the industry. If Google’s servers aren’t safe, whose are? But Google quickly followed up the news with an announcement that the information was taken from a website not belonging to Google. The company has searched its own systems for signs of a compromise and have found nothing.

What to Do Now

Since Gmail powers many workplace email accounts, it’s important that businesses first protect any email accounts that might contain company data. Even if one employee is using a Gmail account for work duties, that employee should take measures to ensure his account is protected. To be safe, business leaders should send instructions to all employees on safeguarding their Gmail accounts, even if they don’t use them for work purposes.

Protecting your Gmail account is easy. The first step is to change your password, which can be done by clicking the down arrow next to the gear in the top-right corner. Choose Settings, then Accounts and Import. Change Password is at the top. You’ll be prompted to enter your old password and your new one twice. Try to shoot for a “Strong” password rating. Once you’ve changed your password, you’ll be taken to another settings screen. If 2-Step Verification is disabled, click the link to set it up and go through the steps. You’ll be notified via phone call or text message every time someone tries to access your Gmail through an untrusted device.

User Security

To help their own systems remain secure, businesses should urge employees to use passwords that are difficult to guess. Administrators can set this up as a requirement on all applications and file servers, making each employee have a combination of letters, numbers, and special characters in every password.

Another trap business users fall into is that of using password keepers. This is a solution to the many passwords we’re all required to keep up with, letting users remember one strong password to access all sites and applications. While acknowledging the usefulness of such tools, it’s important that businesses explore the encryption being used by the particular password keeper being used. If your administrator is responsible for keeping up with everyone’s master password through a console, the security on the console should be investigated, as well.

The Gmail breach is yet another reminder of how vulnerable electronic systems are. If your business employs the best industry-standard software for security and encourages safe password polices, your users can stay safe during large-scale hacking attempts.

Hotmail Gets a Makeover Part 2

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In the second part of our blog about the improved Hotmail, we’ll continue by discussing one more handy new feature available.

One such feature now available in the revamped email server is ‘instant actions,’ a tiny little change that might actually save you a lot of time in the long run. Instant Actions provides you with customizable icons that show up when you hover over each email, allowing you to do things like move or delete a message with one quick click.

Why The New Hotmail is So Exciting:

It is fascinating to watch Microsoft not only catch up and make its own versions of handy Gmail features for Hotmail, but also come up with things Google has yet to think of. Microsoft is trying to bust Hotmail out of its funk and make it a worthy, modern, relevant email server once again, an effort they deserve at least a pat on the back for.

When the changes role out in a few weeks, dust off your Hotmail account and take a peek inside—you might just like what you find.

Hotmail Gets a Makeover

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Hotmail?! Ugh.  A virtual storage space equivalent to your garbage can: spam, spam and more spam. That’s what you’re thinking, right? Who, besides your grandmother, uses that old, orange, ugly monster of an email server anymore?

But maybe, just maybe, you should consider revisiting your good old Hotmail account soon, because it is finally changing. Within weeks Hotmail will be rolling out a set of shiny new features. The changes are long overdue but it seems Microsoft has finally decided it will attempt to give Gmail a run for its money.

What’s New in Hotmail:

One significant improvement of the new system is the inclusion of categories, much like in Gmail.

Hotmail users can now label messages or senders into a particular group, either automatically based on content or sender, or manually. Users can also ‘flag’ messages, which automatically moves them to the top of your inbox and marks them with a little flag, much like Gmail’s ‘star’ system. Hotmail will also now automatically recognize newsletters and put them into a separate folder.

What’s Different from Gmail:

One totally unique and very welcome feature of the new Hotmail is the ‘scheduled cleanup.’ Scheduled Cleanups allow you to move or trash messages from specific senders after a set time period. You want all those irritating Facebook notification emails to be automatically trashed every three days? No problem. You want your banking statements to magically appear in their own folder at the end of every week? Done. It might not sound very exciting but the scheduled cleanup is actually a refreshing and much needed tool that allows you to easily keep your inbox neat and tidy.