There’s a new warning for anyone with an email or social media accounts such as Gmail or Facebook and not taking notice could leave you seriously out of pocket. The team at Action Fraud says it has been inundated with users claiming their accounts have been hacked. In fact, over 33,000 people have reported that they’ve faced issues over the past year with some victims losing a total of £1.4m to online fraud.

According to Action Fraud, social media and email account hacking is a growing problem with the National Fraud and Cyber Crime service now urging users to check their accounts and switch up their passwords.

“Using the same password for multiple accounts? That means criminals only need to steal one of your passwords to hack into multiple accounts,” Action Fraud explained in a post on X (formerly Twitter).

“Email and social media account passwords should be strong and different from all your other passwords.”

It’s important advice and if you use one single code for everything you do on the web then you could be at serious risk.

Those that haven’t changed things up in a while are being told it’s a good idea to use a strong and different password for email and social media accounts.

Action Fraud says combining three random words that each mean something to you is a great way to create a password that is easy to remember but hard to crack. For example, you could use your home town, mixed with a favourite place and the name of a pet such as leicestermiamifido. To make things even tougher for crooks it’s also a good idea to throw in some numbers, capital letters and characters such as L£icesterm1amifid0.

Turning on 2-Step Verification (2SV) for your email and social media accounts is also a good idea as this means new devices won’t be able to log into your accounts unless a unique code is punched in via text message.

“Cyberattacks and hacking are carried out by faceless cybercriminals who target unsuspecting victims looking to take advantage of unprotected social media and email accounts,” explained Adam Mercer, Deputy Director of Action Fraud.

“With this being the top cybercrime reported last financial year, it’s even more important to take action and ensure you lock down your accounts.

“Protect yourself from fraudsters trying to steal or access your valuable information by ensuring your social media and email account passwords are secure. All your passwords should be different and never shared with anyone else. If you have the option, enable 2-step verification to ensure you have twice the protection for all your accounts.”