Recently a friend called and left a panicked voicemail telling me someone in South Africa was sending email from their Gmail account and asking for $2000 cash from all their friends. I told them it sounded like their Gmail account was cracked and we needed to move quickly. It was and we did. Here’s What We Did: Immediately went to every other online account they had (including bank, Facebook, Twitter, Comcast, etc.), logged in and changed the email address on the account to something other than the Gmail one and updated the weak password to a stunningly secure one. (Important: If you don’t change the email address, they will just keep resetting the password.) Reviewed the history of the gmail account on the local computer (searched archived email) and (luckily) found the original welcome message from the Gmail team. (This is one email you will want to hang onto forever! […]