How do I recover my hacked email?

Medway_Flyer

On Thursday I had my Google email account hacked followed by a message sent from my email account to everyone I had ever emailed (many hundreds of people). I was stuck in Spain having been mugged, etc. Could the reader email me back (to a different email address, mind) to gain more information about where they could send money so that I could afford to get home, and so forth.

The phones at work went mad (this is my main work account) as everyone was calling in to see if it was true, I was OK, etc. I manage a small charity in Kent and several kind hearted folks were very concerned. Thankfully they are all quite savvy so no one was conned.

I could not log in to my gmail account as Google had obviously thought something was up. But I could not recover my account because the password had been changed and so had the recovery email address. The recovery email address had become the email address that the hackers had asked people to reply to - my gmail user name but at yahoo.com.

A colleague of mine went to the Google Forum on Thursday a few hours later, describing the situation, our having been informed that this is the best way to get help to try and recover the account. Apparently they have support on the Forum for victims of hacking. Well, as at 5pm today there has been no response from anyone there.

Is this it, or is there hope of recovering the account? This is my main work account

Browntoa

http://knol.google.com/k/how-to-recover-a-hacked-or-compromised-gmail-account?pli=1#

Please note that you can not recover your account by posting to the Gmail help forum or by adding a comment to this article

Medway_Flyer

Does this mean Google just disowns me when I'm hacked, then?