For Members | Posted January 18, 2010
Foreign correspondents in a few bureaus in Beijng have recently discovered that their Gmail accounts had been hijacked. Their emails were being forwarded to a stranger’s address.
Here is how you can check if your Gmail has been compromised:
- Log into your Gmail account
- Click “Settings” in the upper right hand corner. Then click on the “Forwarding and POP/IMAP” tab.
- Look at the forwarding section. If there’s a mysterious email address you can’t recognize, then
that’s cause for concern.
- You can check “disable forwarding” to stop future emails from being sent to this address, though other steps may also be necessary to make your account secure.
We remind all members that journalists in China have been particular targets of hacker attacks in the last two years. Please be very careful about what links you click on, what email attachments you open, and do run virus checks regularly.
If you have been hacked, please let the FCCC know at fcccadmin@gmail.com. We can help put you in touch with experts to run diagnostics.
Some things you can do generally to improve security:
- Access Gmail through a secure HTTP connection: https://mail.google.com. (The extra ’s’ means secure). Make sure always use https is checked in Gmail’s settings, under General>Browser connection.
- Change your passwords.
- Keep up to date with software patches and updates.
