What’s wrong in the email that I got below? Well for one thing, I didn’t try to reset my password, and the email doesn’t tell me what to do if I was not the one who initiated this password reset process.

Someone had recently attempted to reset my Google Account password. I'm not sure if this happened by accident or if it was an intention attempt to gain access to my account. Either way, it got me thinking "What if someone stole my Google account? What can I do?” If you had your account stolen and what sort of impact is it going to have on your life?

If you've just been using it to access various Google services, you no longer will be able to access any of them. If you've been using Gmail with that account, then other online services that you've associated with it get compromised as well. For example, at http://digg.com you can retrieve a lost user name or password by simply entering your email address. What this means is, if someone stole your email account (that’s used with digg); they've basically taken over your digg account as well.

Life is going to be very frustrating and you'd need to recover from this situation as quickly as possible. Leaving aside all the freaking-out, head-banging and sobbing there is hope.

Google Accounts Help provides support when you face "issues that prevent you from accessing your account". However, if you want to have your problem solved quickly and efficiently you need to do your part and help out with some information regarding your account. The more you know the faster your turnaround time is going to be.

Some of the questions that you'd be asked to prove your ownership of the account include:

- Last successful login date
- Account creation date

- If you use Gmail:
    Most recent secondary email address
    Up to five frequently emailed contacts
    Names of up to four labels

- If you signed up via an invitation:
    Invitation URL (listed in your Gmail invitation)    
    The Gmail username of the person who invited you to create an account
    The email address to which your invitation was sent

- Google products you used with this account and the date you started using each one

While you are not required to answer all these, being able to answer at least some additional questions will definitely help your case. Knowing this, I took a few minutes to find the answers to some of these questions.  Just in case.