If you store sensitive data in your email (I bet you do), here is a latest tip from our side that will help you make Gmail unHackable, well almost.

Your Gmail account, your photos, your private documents—if you reuse the same password on multiple sites and one of those sites gets hacked, or your password is conned out of you directly through a phishing scam, it can be used to access some of your most closely-held information. Gmail had gone https a year ago, and then OAuth, but that may not be enough if you are careless.

How to Prevent Gmail from Being Hacked

First things first, you should have a long and good password that cannot be memorized by any other person. A combination of a phrase and numbers, special characters is a perfect thing to do. Beyond that, chose a password recovery that you believe no one else can answer.

Beyond those basic preventions, Google has introduced a 2 step authentication, that makes your gmail account almost impossible to hack, almost. You can safely spread out your password and still have no risks of getting hacked, such is the beauty of 2 step authentication.





Go to Gmail’s settings > personal settings and enroll for 2step authentication. A user-friendly set-up wizard will guide you through the process, including setting up a backup phone and creating backup codes in case you lose access to your primary phone.

Once enabled, now on, you’ll see an extra page that prompts you for a code when you sign in to your account. You have 3 different otpions to get this code:

* get called by Google on your phone that will speak the code.
* Receive code via SMS
* Generate code yourself using a mobile application on your Android, BlackBerry or iPhone device.




Sure, its an extra step, bit time consuming but what you get in result is superb security that no other Email provider offers. If you are lazy, like me, you can always choose a “Remember verification for this computer for 30 days” on that PC.

If you believe you are better having different passwords for different Google sites, (e.g. different for adsense) you can use application-specific passwords too.