Social Media Vulnerability: Twitter Account Hacks
Millions of followers is great, that is until a hacker gets in…
One of the risks of having a sizable social media following is that your account becomes open to an increased vulnerability of being hacked. Those with nefarious aims find massive Twitter followings too tempting to pass up. and so they will often target accounts based on the size of their influence.
Hear Her Roar
We saw this recently with mega pop star Katy Perry who, with 90 million Twitter followers, has the largest following of anyone using the social media network. Once they had gained access to her account, hackers sent a stream of racist and offensive Tweets which were sure to offend her huge following and spark outrage across the internet. The Tweets were subsequently deleted by the star, but the event serves as a good reminder of the fact that no one is immune to a potential hack of a social media account.
According to the social media network itself, there are various ways in which an account might get hacked, including “if you’ve entrusted your username and password to a malicious third-party application or website, if your Twitter account is vulnerable due to a weak password, if viruses or malware on your computer are collecting passwords or if you’re on a compromised network.”
There are many reasons why hackers might target an account: to get banking info, to use an influential account to direct more followers to a bogus account or simply to get attention. But the truth is that all of us—ranging from accounts with 90 followers to 9 million—are vulnerable to attack. The good news, however, is that there are ways to protect yourself and enhance the security of your account. Here are a few of them:
Email address security:
Your Twitter account is only as secure as the email address it is attached to. Make sure you change the email address associated with your Twitter account if you think there is a chance it might be compromised, and only use addresses which you’re certain only you have access to.
Be wary of third-party applications:
Lots of social media accounts will ask to use your Twitter login info as a way of gaining entry to their app. Avoid doing this if you’re not absolutely certain of the requester’s integrity. These requests can very often be the way that hackers gain access to your login details, so if there is a way to log in without relying on your Twitter credentials, opt for that.
Strengthen your password:
It’s the most basic piece of advice you hear over and over again on the internet: don’t trust or rely on a weak password. And yet time and time again, people carelessly use the same password across all their accounts or use a word that’s incredibly obvious or easy to guess. When it comes to Twitter, the advice is no different. Don’t allow laziness to increase your chances of falling victim to a hacker.
Set up alert systems:
If you have a large following and you’re particularly worried about being hacked, you can utilize a service like “SecureMySocial” which will provide you with a warning if Tweets containing offensive language are sent from your account. This can be helpful in the sense of allowing you to respond quickly in the event of an attack to minimize damage.
Two factor:
Another more extreme security measure is to set up two factor authentication for your account, so that anyone who tries to log in not only needs your details, but also access to your phone number or email account. This can be a somewhat tedious way to log in each time, but it’s the most sure-fire way to keep your account secure from hackers.