Prevent Your Twitter And Social Media Accounts From Hacking

Today, another major hacking occurred to a trusted news source, the Associated Press. This particular hacking was not light in its messaging. A tweet stating “Breaking: Two Explosions in the White House and Barack Obama is injured” was sent at 12:13pm CST resulting in thousands of RT’s, the stock market briefly crashing 143 points, and a world fearful of another potential terrorist attack.

Quickly, White House and AP staff confirmed the tweet was baseless and a result of a hack.

This is not the first time a major brand has been hacked. Burger King’s twitter account was hacked in February, and numerous Major League Baseball accounts were compromised in 2012.

How does this happen? Often times, hacking results due to weak passwords. This is not the sexy, technical answer expected. Other reasons include giving permission to third party applications to find out various pieces of information about your account: who isn’t following you back, top connections, your Twitter crush, etc.

In the Associated Press case, this could have been a focused initiative by an unknown group who first attempted to steal AP journalist passwords. Mike Baker, AP reporter tweeted “The AP Hack came less than an hour after some of us received an impressively disguised phishing email.”

There is another side to this story: Twitter appears extremely vulnerable to hacking. Earlier in 2013, Twitter reported 250,000 account passwords had been compromised by hackers and issued no further comment. In June 2012, popular professional networking site LinkedIn endured a security breach impacting 6.4 million users and their passwords.

Quick tips for users to prevent hacking

• Change your passwords every 90 days
• Avoid using the same password for all of your accounts
• Avoid using a family members name that someone close to you could easily guess
• Use numbers, upper and lower case letters, and symbols (when allowed)

All social networking sites must be serious about preventing what feels like constant hacking. Two-factor authentication is one solution. This would enable the social channel to send a text verification code to your phone or email after you log in to ensure you are the owner of the account. Adding an extra layer of security may prevent numerous hacking attempts, until the hackers find another way.

Have you been hacked or compromised before? Share your story in the comment area below.

Jason

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Social Media & Social Networking: What is too much?

There has been a lot on my mind lately. Some of it is personal, some is trivial. Here, I will choose to share something that should interest each reader of this blog.

By reading my blog, or any blog, you become part of the social media and social networking world. The social media world is a new and evolving arena at the same time, which means the rules for social media are being created as we speak. Rules that are not set are difficult to follow. Common sense rules apply: create and contribute meaningful conversation, don’t create too much noise, show your personality while keeping your thoughts clean enough that you could tell your mother, etc.

There’s a problem: not everyone has common sense.

As a person that has grown up in the social media and social networking era, I am on facebook, MySpace, twitter, LinkedIn, digg, flickr, I blog for the online marketing blog at work, I blog for personal reasons (as you’re reading right now). There are so many social networking sites out there beyond the list above. It can be difficult to keep track and actively participate in all of the above networks.

For over a year, MySpace has been losing its grip on the top social networking site. Facebook, recently surpassing 225 million users, and twitter growing at a ridiculous rate, show that social networking is here to stay, and you should be a part of all that you can be.  99% of people I know are on Facebook, 90% of people I know are on twitter. I have noticed, based on my ‘top friends’ on MySpace, that people are deleting their MySpace accounts.

This led me to think of a few questions that I need answered by you:

• What would make you quit ‘social media’?
• If you left one site, does that mean the other sites you are on satisfy your needs?
• What is your favorite social networking site? Why?
• What purpose does social media/social networking serve in your life?
• Is there too much social media/social networking?

I look forward to a good discussion with you.

~Jason Douglas

twitter: @jasondouglas

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