Step one
Check your email account settings
The center of your privacy is usually your personal email account. Many sites use your email address to verify that you really are who you say you are. Therefore, it’s a vital first step to ensure that it’s protected.
This isn’t as simple as merely choosing a new password, however. When an account has been compromised, the first task that online fraudsters do is to ensure that they can retain access to that account.
They generally do this by making behind-the-scenes changes to the account settings. Examples might be altering the secondary/backup email address, changing the registered mobile number, changing security questions or forwarding/redirecting all emails to their own address.
You might not have noticed any such changes. But if a cyber-criminal has – for example – altered a backup email address setting, then they use this reset your password once more – even after you have changed it.
Secondary/backup email addresses that you don’t recognize
Mobile numbers that aren’t yours
Changes to the security questions
(it would be worth changing these yourself at this point, anyway)
Email forwarding or redirecting settings that have been set up without you knowing