A few days after writing a controversial blog article about poser Twitter accounts, I was surprised to find two confirmation emails from malicious sites about my registration with them. The first one was from an adult site while the second email was from a random chat site. 

Now I'm quite sure I wasn't the one who registered for an account with them. My guess is that the same people or groups of people who were involved in the poser accounts issue were trying to harm me.

Anyway, what I did was checked Gmail security log feature in order to see whether my Google email account was hacked. If you have encountered the same issue before or you think your account has been compromised, this is something you might find helpful.

'Last account activity' is an email security feature of Gmail that gives you information about the most recent activity of your account. This includes information on when your account was last accessed using a regular web browser, a POP email client such as Thunderbird and Outlook, a mobile device, third-party applications and many others. Google will also show the list of IP address, associated location, time and date of when your email account was accessed.

When you find an unknown IP address, it may be indicative that your account was accessed by another person. When this happens, it is highly recommended that you change your password ASAP before its too late. If your email was accessed by a third-party application that you did not authorize or no longer use, it is best to disconnect them.

To access the 'Last account activity' log, simply click the Details link next to the Last account activity line at the bottom right of any Gmail page. You can also see activity for your entire Google account. Just go to https://security.google.com/ and click Recent activity from the Security menu found on the left sidebar. If you want to make your Google account even more secure I created this guide on how to secure Gmail account from hackers on my personal blog.

As a blogger, protecting our email accounts is very important. Most of us, particularly those who use the Blogger platform use Gmail account in order to login. Can you imagine losing access to your blog? The horror! This is the reason why I activated 2-step verification. You can learn more about it on my 'how to' post above.

Please share your thoughts on this issue. If you have additional security tips, do share in the comments box below.

Blogging is essentially an informal form of writing articles online. Usually, when one decides to start a blog, creating content appears to be easy at first because of the overflowing inspiration and hype. Most of the bloggers I know started out their journey in the blogosphere as a plain hobby - something that they can spend their extra time into and share whatever they like. However, once you take your blogging to the next level and turn it into a professional portfolio or a means to earn money online, it becomes such a tedious task with all the researching involved. 

If you are working as a web content writer or a blogger accepting paid posts and reviews, you certainly understand where I'm coming from. Have you ever experienced being assigned with a writing task that you completely know nothing about? I have been blogging for quite some time now and recently got a job as a web content writer. Today I would like to share with you five of my favorite tools that helped me get back a little bit of my time. There are a lot of productivity tools out there but these five I use most often. I hope you will find them helpful to you as much as they did for me.

Toggle labels themselves as an insanely simple way to track time online. In my experience, they really are and will definitely save you time compared to manually tracking your tasks on time sheets or spreadsheets. You just type in your current task and then start the tracker. If you need to pause from work and have a break, you simply click stop. Once you are back, click continue. 

Time tracking is very important especially when you are being paid on an hourly basis. For those who don't, tracking your time is still a valuable information to keep as it helps you identify if you have made any improvements productivity wise. 

Diigo is a very powerful tool when doing research online. Aside from being an excellent way to organize your bookmarks, Diigo allows you to annotate (or highlight) important paragraph or paragraphs of virtually any online article. Imagine skimming through a very long Wikipedia article and seconds later you found yourself wanting to go back to a specific part but there is no way to quickly identify it? Diigo's highlighter option is fit for the job.

Screenshots are one of the most common things a blogger needs to do especially for those "how to" posts but is also one of the most tedious task. Lighshot is a lightweight and easy to use screenshot tool with lots of additional features such as editing and annotation, upload screenshot to Lightshot server to get quick web link, and finding visually similar images. It is available as a web browser extension or as a stand alone software that perfectly integrates with your keyboard's Print Screen button.

What makes Lightshot stand out from competitor tools is that it allows you to select any area on a desktop. Unlike the conventional screenshot method wherein you have to manually crop the screenshot, this tool enables you to capture only a specific area that you want. You can literally capture, copy and then paste images to a word processor without any editing.

IFTTT or If This Then That is a service that lets you automate countless tasks in a very simple way. As the name implies, you just select a trigger and then set an action. Save a substantial amount of time by having the internet work for you instead of doing them manually.

Blog post inspiration can come from anywhere so save your thoughts, ideas, things you like, interesting things you saw, read or hear so you can come back to them later. If you are fond of using post its or scribbling on a notebook, these apps makes powerful alternatives at the same time cost effective.


About The Author:
Jane loves to explore what the internet has to offer. It is her personal mission to help people (in her own little way) find solutions by making use of available resources online. You can find her regularly blogging at her personal site, JaneVestil.com.