I know it’s annoying… you go to log in to your Hotmail/Gmail/Yahoo account and before you can access your emails there is a little box prompting you for information.
It can be so tempting to just hit ‘skip’ and think “Ill deal with that later”. We can promise you … its worth taking the time to put that information in!
Why does it ask you for another email account?
If you already have an email account, I know that it can seem silly that they ask for another email address. The email providers now work on the fact that most of us have multiple email accounts. One for work, one for home. Sometimes even multiple email accounts for work. Or if you are like me – you end up with 7 accounts configured in Outlook and even more floating around that you don’t actually check.
Having a secondary email account as a recovery option is a great idea. If you forget your password, or heaven forbid you get hacked, you can have the recovery information emailed to your back up account and easily go about changing the password and getting back into your account.
If you don’t have this option or any other recovery options set – the process of recovering your account can be long and arduous.
If it asks for your mobile phone number – put it in!
One of the quickest and easiest ways to recover your email account is to get a text message sent to your phone. Its quick, easy, free and best of all – means you don’t have to rely on knowing another password to get into another email account!
To be really secure – put in both email and phone numbers!
We see it every week here – customers coming in with “free-mail” accounts hacked. i.e. Gmail/Hotmail/Yahoo email accounts. The password wasn’t secure enough and hackers have got in, changed the password and then sent out thousands of spam emails. If you are really unlucky – they will email people in the address book and feed them a sob story (pretending to be you) and how “you” really need money for some desperate situation.
Putting in both email and phone means you have a solid method of getting back into your email account – changing the password (to something super secure) and then going about your business.
How can I add this information in to my account?
Typically if you log in to the settings area, there will be a security tab. This section will let you (generally) add in multiple recovery email accounts and a mobile phone number.
You can even increase the security of your account so only ‘trusted devices’ – like your own computer – can log in to the email account.
If you need help with recovering an account, or increasing your security just drop in and see us!