What Should You Do if Your Bumble Account Is Hacked?

Secure your email first. Bumble's advice is to change your email password before anything else, then change the password on the Apple, Facebook or Google account you use to log in, or contact your network provider if you log in with your phone number. Next, log out of Bumble on every device you use, because logging out on one device only logs out that one. If you are already locked out, contact Bumble's support staff right away.

Men usually spot it one of two ways. There are chats they never started, or lines in their conversations they never sent. Or something on their page has changed and they did not change it.

Either one is enough to act on. Do not wait to see whether it happens again. Work through the steps below the same day, in order.

Bumble puts the email password first for a reason. Your email is usually the key to everything else. Whoever controls it can often reset the passwords on your other accounts, including the one you use for Bumble.

Change it to something long that you have never used anywhere else. While you are in your email settings, look for any sign-in activity or devices you do not recognize, and turn on any extra sign-in protection your email provider offers.

What comes next depends on how you sign in to Bumble.

Apple, Facebook or Google. Change the password on that account, from that platform's own settings rather than from inside Bumble. If someone got into that account, fixing it there closes the door they used.

Phone number. Contact your network provider. Your number is the key in this case, so the company that controls your number is the one to talk to.

Whichever route applies to you, do this step after your email, not before. Otherwise the person with your email can simply reset the new password.

This is the step most men skip, and it matters. Bumble says only the device you log out from is logged out. So if someone signed in on their own phone, logging out on yours does nothing to theirs.

On each device where you use Bumble:

1. Open your Profile.
2. Go to Settings.
3. Tap Log out.

Do it on your phone, your tablet, and anything else you have ever used for the app. Then log back in on your own device with your newly secured login.

If the password has been changed and you are locked out, contact Bumble's support staff right away. Do not wait to see whether you can recover it yourself first.

Be specific when you write. Say how you normally log in, what you noticed and roughly when it started. The clearer the picture, the faster they can help.

Be careful about who you trust while you are stressed. Anyone who contacts you out of the blue offering to recover your account, especially for a fee, is not helping you. Go to Bumble yourself.

This is the step that protects your reputation, and most men forget it. If messages went out in your name, the women who got them have no idea it was not you.

Someone may have been sent something crude. Someone may have been asked for money. Once you are back in control, send a short note to anyone you were talking to:

"Quick heads up, someone got into my account for a bit. If you got anything strange from me, it wasn't me."

Keep it that short. No long story. The women you were getting on well with will pick the conversation back up, and the rest will at least know why something odd arrived.

If you already have a woman's number, text her there instead. That is one more reason to follow a dating coach's habit of moving a good conversation from the app to your phone once she is clearly engaged. A conversation in your texts survives an account problem.

Once the account is yours again, close the gaps so it does not happen twice.

1. Use a separate, strong password for your email and for any login you use with Bumble.
2. Turn on the extra sign-in protection your email and your Apple, Facebook or Google account offer.
3. Never read a login code out to anyone, including a woman you matched with who asks for one.
4. Move the conversations worth keeping onto your phone once she is warmed up.

Change your email password first, then your Apple, Facebook or Google password, or call your network provider if you log in with your number. Log out of Bumble on every device, since logging out only affects the one you are holding. If you are locked out, contact Bumble's support right away, and then warn the women you were talking to that the strange messages were not from you.