Symptoms

• There are several common symptoms indicating that an email address has been hijacked. The most obvious is that the password no longer works, because the hijacker has gained access to your account and changed the password. In some cases, if the hacker has sent an enormous volume of spam, the email provider will shut down access to the email account. In other cases, friends or colleagues may notify you that they received an odd message, or you may find in your inbox a large number of "bounced" emails that could not be delivered, each of which contains the same subject line for a message you never wrote.
  
  

Considerations

• One of the reasons hackers hijack email accounts is that spam is often effective. Sending email is free, and some recipients of the spam actually open the messages. According to the Yale University Information Technology Services, in about 5.6 percent of pornography-related spam messages, the recipient will click on the link in the message. Pharmaceutical spam messages have a 0.02 percent click rate, and spam messages offering Rolex watches have a 0.0075 percent click rate.
  
  

Causes

• Hackers are able to gain access to email accounts in multiple ways. One of the main ways is that many users will log into their email accounts on public computers, such as those in a library or Internet café, and then they forget to log out. Another common cause of hacking success is that many people use weak passwords that can be easily guessed, or that they use a PC that is infected with spyware that allows a hacker to remotely steal their passwords.
  
  

Remedies

• In many cases, dealing with a hijacked email account may be as simple as logging in and changing the email settings and password to something that can't be easily guessed, effectively preventing the hacker from continuing to send spam. In addition, you may have to notify each of your spammed friends and colleagues that your email was hacked. You should also check your email settings to ensure that the hacker hasn't made changes, such as adding an email signature, or automatically forwarding email or attaching files. If you can't log in to your email account, you may have to contact the email service provider, who will likely have you verify that the email account belongs to you.