4 Steps for Protecting Your Social Media Accounts from Hack
Hey guys, welcome to my first blog post in 2019!!
This year one of the first things on my long list of To-Dos was to change all the passwords including those for my social media accounts. The first two weeks got me doing password recovery as I couldn’t remember most of them 🤣😂 — but what would you rather have? Forget your password and do recovery or lose your account to hack.
“Real talk”
Whether you use your social media as a lead generation tool for your business or you use social media just for fun, to connect and share precious moments with family and friends, you will agree that this tool has become a critical part of your everyday life.
Now imagine if someone gained access to any of your social media accounts — they could change your account name, password and recovery data in order to lock you out and take total control. They could even go as far as pretending to be you and send out compromised messages to your contacts and this list is endless really.
To help you stay safe from hackers and secure your social media accounts, here’s a list of things you should do.
1- Choose a strong password
The first step to securing your social media account it creating a strong password, and No, I don’t mean Password123456. Strong passwords typically contain symbols, numbers and letters mixed in uppercase and lower case but try using something not too complicated for you to remember. If you are still not sure what a strong password should look like, see the image below.
2- Change your password regularly
A strong password is not enough to keep your account secure, so it is advised that you change your password at least once in 3 months. This is to make sure any old or public devices you have used in the past can no longer access your account. If it’s a business page, this makes sure that former staff or team members also do not have admin access to your page.
To always be on the safe side, try not to use the same password across all your accounts to avoid compromising all your accounts when one is hacked.
3- Two-Factor Authentication
This is probably the best and most secure way to log in and protect your social media accounts.
“You know how you lock your car with the remote and still check all four doors to make sure it’s really locked… LOL. Think about this the same way you use a hard token or one-time-password (OTP) for your bank transactions. When someone tries to log in to your account, they have to input a PIN that will be sent to a phone number before they are granted access. Many social media platforms currently have and recommend this feature to help protect your account.
An alternative to using a phone number is to set up Two-Factor Authentication using Google Authenticator App that generates a unique code for each account every time you try to log in.
4- Be careful and only use trusted third-party applications
Before using a third-party app to manage any of your social media accounts, you must first grant such app access to your account. Third-party apps can often do different things on your behalf including posting on your behalf. Hence it is VERY IMPORTANT that you research such app and only grant access to trusted third-party apps. It is also very important to READ and be sure what information you are giving such app access to.
If I was to write an extra point, I would say, USE YOUR HEAD!! Never input your social media login details into a different website asking for them. A safe website would use the bottom “Log in with Facebook” rather than ask you to put your Facebook login directly.
It’s also interesting to note that most successful hack attempts are caused by human error that carelessly leaves the door open for a hack.
I hope you found this blog interesting and it scares you enough to take these steps to protect your social media accounts today. If you think I missed an important point, please share in the comments below and let’s all learn!!
