Have your friends been sending you text messages asking when you went to England and how you lost your wallet? 
Have you suddenly sent around emails to everyone in your address book containing nothing but a link on how they can make easy money without leaving their homes?
If so, your email account has probably been hacked.
The first thing to do is change your password. Make it a strong one: tough to crack, containing no real words and several non-alphabetical characters.
Then run a virus scan.
Then apologize to your friends.
But sometimes the repercussions go beyond that. A cousin of mine had her email hacked recently. We all got messages with links to some get-rich-quick scheme.
Another relative thought she was doing me a favor by forwarding the whole email to me.
My response: "I hope you didn't click this link. Her email was hacked."
Then I heard back: "I did briefly, then saw that it was regarding blogs and sent it to you. How can you tell if something was hacked before opening it?"
My answer: "Well, when someone who usually sends you emails with pictures of her kids sends you something saying 'Are you looking to get more cash?' then it’s a pretty good bet that it was hacked."
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