Account hacked? Start here
Whether it’s Instagram, Gmail, Steam or your bank — the first 30 minutes decide how bad it gets. Do the six universal steps below, then open the guide for your exact service: each one links the official recovery flow and the traps to avoid.
The first 30 minutes — any service
Account takeovers cost Americans over $262M in reported losses in 2025 (FBI IC3) — and most of the damage happens in the first hours. Order matters:
Use the service’s dedicated hacked-account flow (linked in each guide below) — not just password reset, which often emails the attacker. If you still have access: change the password NOW and sign out all other sessions.
Whatever else was hacked, check your email account before anything else — it receives everyone’s password resets. If the attacker holds your inbox, they can take back every account you "recover".
If a card, bank, or balance is attached: freeze the card in the banking app, report unauthorized transactions to the service AND the bank, and screenshot everything. Speed lowers your liability for unauthorized electronic transfers. For bank-account takeovers, call the number on the back of your card — never a number from a search ad.
Phone suddenly on "No service" while accounts fall one by one? An attacker may have moved your number to their SIM to intercept your codes. Call your carrier from another phone immediately — see our AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile guides below.
Attackers monetize stolen accounts by scamming your contacts in your name. One message on another channel ("ignore anything I ‘sent’ today") protects your friends and documents the compromise for appeals.
Most takeovers start with a password leaked in an old breach and reused. Check your email against known breach databases — free, below — then fix every account sharing that password.
The accounts worth reading up on first
Not because they get hacked more often, but because losing one of these takes other things with it. The full A–Z list is below.
The inbox is the master key — every other password reset lands there, so this one comes first even if it wasn’t the account you noticed.
The email gets changed within minutes, which breaks ordinary password reset. There is a separate flow for exactly that.
Money leaves fast and the public feed tells the attacker which friend to imitate next.
No branches to walk into, and the fake “Chime support” numbers in search ads are how a lot of these takeovers start.
Crypto transfers don’t reverse, so the order you do things in decides how much you keep.
Trees and DNA matches expose relatives who never had a say in it — and sharing invites survive a password change.
Pick your service
207 step-by-step recovery guides, each with the official hacked-account link (verified live), the locked-out path, and the service-specific traps.
Find the leak that let them in
Roughly a third of takeovers reuse a password leaked in an old breach. See which known breaches and dark-web dumps include your email — free, no signup.
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