4 Ways to Protect & Secure Your Email Address Against Hackers
How do you know if your email is safe from potential hackers? What precautionary steps can you take to secure your email address and ramp up your email security game? Find out in this article. If our…
How do you know if your email is safe from potential hackers? What precautionary steps can you take to secure your email address and ramp up your email security game? Find out in this article.
If our online life had a lock, it would be our email address, and email hackers are thieves trying to break and enter your property.
Fortunately, ensuring email security doesn't have to be a daunting task. Let's explore simple yet effective ways that you can employ to secure your email address against those pesky email hackers, even with limited tech and cybersecurity knowledge.
Your email is the master key. Almost every password reset in your life lands there.
Is your email safe from potential hackers?
Here are a few things you can do to check whether or not you're safe from potential email hackers.
Look for any unrecognized emails
The first and easiest action you can take is to look through your Inbox and Sent folders and see if there are any emails you don't recognize.
Ask your contacts
See if any of your friends, family, or colleagues receive any suspicious messages coming from your email address.
Use services from your provider
You can also take a further step by using logs, audits, and other functionalities from Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 (previously Office 365).
4 ways to secure your email address from email hackers
Now let's see what preventative steps you can take to level up your email security.
Always use strong and secure passwords
The best type of password is the one you can't even remember. This may sound impossible, but you can easily do it with a password generator and password storage. BitWarden has always been our go-to platform to keep our passwords extra safe 🔒
How to do it
- Open Bitwarden's generator, switch to passphrase mode, and set four or five words for logins you occasionally type.
- Save every new login straight into the vault instead of reusing an old password.
- Paste your current or old passwords into Bitwarden's strength tester and replace anything that does not read 'centuries' to crack.
- Turn on the vault's reused-password report and rotate every duplicate it flags.
See a worked example
For example, a small team might set one rule: every shared login uses a Bitwarden-generated password of at least 20 characters or a four-to-five word passphrase, stored only in the vault so no one is retyping or reusing anything. Nobody memorizes the string, and that is the point.
Tools to use
Bitwarden Password Generator to create strong random passwords or passphrases in the browser, and the Bitwarden Password Strength Tester to estimate how long each would take to crack.
Steal our AI prompt
I use [Bitwarden / describe your password manager]. Draft a one-page, non-technical password policy for a [describe team size and type] team: minimum length, when to use a passphrase versus a random string, how new logins get created and stored, and how often to rotate old or reused ones. The risky habits we have today are: [describe].
Use Two Factor Authentication (2FA)
2FA provides a second layer of security requiring manual input of a time-limited, one-time password. So, don't think of using an authenticator as a burdensome extra step. It's a security code on your lock.
You can use the authenticator from Google, Microsoft, BitWarden, or others.
How to do it
- Install an authenticator app such as Bitwarden Authenticator, or the one built into Google or Microsoft.
- Turn on 2-Step Verification in Google and Microsoft 365 first, then scan the QR code into the app.
- Save the backup recovery codes into your password vault, never in your inbox.
- Prefer app-generated codes or passkeys over SMS anywhere both are offered.
See a worked example
For example, you might turn on 2FA for the company Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 admin accounts first, then work outward to email, banking, and the password vault, using an authenticator app rather than SMS so a SIM-swap cannot intercept the code.
Tools to use
Bitwarden Authenticator for free time-based 2FA codes, and Google's 2-Step Verification guide for the official walkthrough.
Steal our AI prompt
Walk me through turning on two-factor authentication step by step for [describe the account, e.g. Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, or my bank]. I want to use an authenticator app, not SMS. Tell me exactly where the setting lives, how to scan the code into [Bitwarden Authenticator / describe your app], and how to store the backup recovery codes safely.
Get extra protection with DMARC, DKIM & SPF
These email authentication methods help protect your domain against hackers, spammers, and phishers. With DMARC, DKIM, and SPF in action, unauthorized parties who have no access to your email address can't do anything to abuse it.
How to do it
- Check what your domain publishes today with MXToolbox's DMARC, SPF, and DKIM lookups.
- Turn on DKIM signing in your Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 admin console.
- Publish an SPF record that lists every service allowed to send as your domain.
- Add a DMARC record at p=none, read the reports for a couple of weeks, then move to quarantine or reject.
See a worked example
For example, a domain that sends from Google Workspace plus one marketing tool would publish an SPF record naming both senders, enable DKIM signing in the admin console, then start DMARC at p=none to watch the reports before tightening to quarantine or reject once legitimate mail passes cleanly.
Tools to use
MXToolbox DMARC Check to look up and diagnose a domain's live records, and Google Workspace: Set up DKIM for the official signing steps.
Steal our AI prompt
My domain [paste domain] sends email from [list your senders, e.g. Google Workspace, a CRM, a newsletter tool]. Explain SPF, DKIM, and DMARC in plain language, then give me the exact DNS records to publish and the safe order to roll them out, starting DMARC at p=none. Here is what MXToolbox currently shows for the domain: [paste results].
Detect breaches
Search your email address on Have I Been Pwned to see if it has shown up in any data breaches. It most likely has, and what you can do now is start implementing unique, long, and secure passwords. This is non-negotiable.
How to do it
- Search each work and personal email address on Have I Been Pwned.
- Sign up for Mozilla Monitor so you get alerted about future breaches automatically.
- For any hit, change that password everywhere you reused it, then enable 2FA on the account.
- If you own the domain, subscribe to Have I Been Pwned's domain-wide breach notifications.
See a worked example
For example, you might check every shared mailbox and each team member's work address on Have I Been Pwned, and wherever a breach shows up, change that password and switch on 2FA right away rather than assuming the exposure is old and harmless.
Tools to use
Have I Been Pwned to check whether an address has appeared in known breaches, and Mozilla Monitor for free ongoing alerts about new ones.
Steal our AI prompt
I checked [paste email address] on Have I Been Pwned and it appeared in these breaches: [paste breach names or describe them]. Give me a prioritized recovery checklist: which passwords to change first, where I most likely reused them, what to enable, and how to tell whether the account is actively compromised versus only historically exposed.
Email security: important for all, paramount for companies
It can be easy to ignore email security, use the same password on all sites so you'd never have to click that Forgot password button, underestimate the importance of 2FA, and just want it to be easy anyway.
But remember that your email address is the lock that safeguards your personal data. You don't want it to be easily hacked and get your data stolen. Just like how you keep your bank accounts secure with passwords, OTPs, and PINs, you should treat your email address the same way.
However, we understand that some of these four ways to secure your email address might seem too complicated for those who have limited tech and cybersecurity knowledge. Worry not, you leave the hard work to us!
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