As much as you tried to avoid it, it finally happened to you. Your email was hacked. Now, you are receiving calls and response emails from your friends, family, and co-workers about the crazy messages that have been filling their inboxes from your account.
How did this happen? You never give your email address out unless it is completely necessary and you monitor your sent messages daily. Regardless of how it has happened the first thing you need to do immediately is CHANGE YOUR PASSWORD!!!! This should hopefully stop anyone from getting back into your email account. The next thing you can do is email everyone on your contact list and let them know that you are aware that your account was hacked and you have everything under control.
Getting hacked is a frustrating and sometimes unavoidable issue. If you have any old email addresses that you don’t use anymore it is best to close the account and/or still monitor its activity. An old email address with thousands of unread messages may seem harmless to you, but is an ideal email account for hackers. Most often they can hack and use your old email address without detection for a long period of time since you rarely check it.