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So you just got hacked and lost access to your email or social media account. What now?

First, let’s start with what you shouldn’t do: panic. You’re not the first person to go through this, and you will not be the last.

Big companies know this and have come up with ways for you to recover your account, and get your online life back on track. In this article, we’re going to go through all the steps you need to follow to recover important accounts such as Gmail, Outlook, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

What you need to take into account, however, is that each of these companies will first try to figure out if you are actually trustworthy. Here are just some of the elements that will help a company determine if you are really you, and not someone else:

* Have you logged into the account in the past from the same device? If you use the same PC for login and also to recover the account, the email provider has greater confidence that you are you.

*Do you have two-factor authentication activated?

*Do you have a backup email set up for the account?

*Have you remembered a past password?

* Did you answer any security questions?

To help you navigate easier, here’s a set of internal links to quickly move from one account to the next.