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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NBC News Twitter Hacked @NBCNews by The Script Kiddies

Another Twitter hoax occured Friday afternoon at 4:49pm CDT with The Script Kiddies taking credit for hacking into the NBC News Twitter account, spreading erroneous reports of a plane attacking Ground Zero in New York, NY.

This comes on the weekend of the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 tragedies. Image of the hacked NBC News Twitter feed below.

The tweets are false and no plane has been hijacked or crashed at Ground Zero.

The Script Kiddies are listed as based out of the UK. The group was behind a Fox News Twitter hoax claiming the death of President Barack Obama during the July 4th weekend earlier this year.

Update: 5:10pm CDT: The Script Kiddies twitter account has been suspended by Twitter.

Jason Douglas

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20 Questions From Saturday’s #tweetnmeet

For those who are not familiar, #tweetnmeet is a live chat moderated by Erica Mayer designed to connect people on twitter by answering questions about themselves and generating conversation around the responses.

#tweetnmeet’s are relatively new, and have gained a large following in a short amount of time. This Saturday, Erica moderated another #tweetnmeet. I was unable to participate, but tracked down all 20 questions. Here are my answers (in bold):

Question 1: who are you, where do you live, what do you do? Jason Douglas; Minneapolis/Hopkins; Online Marketing Manager at Spyder Trap Online Marketing.

Question 2: U R snowed in: choose 1 person, 1 thing, and 1 food to get you through. My lady; a large blanket; pizza from Umbria.

Question 3: what is your favorite song right now? Sadly, I do not have a working radio in my car. I have no idea what’s hot or what’s not. 😦

Question 4: what is the story behind your profile pic? Where, who took it, special meaning? I was at a friends’ wedding last October, and there was a photographer who was taking group photos. I assembled a group, and we were on our way up until the rest of the group decided to ditch me. Awkwardly, I asked if I could still have a picture taken. The photographer said: ‘Sure… act like you just got a DWI.’ I was instantly confused, and SNAP, the moment was captured.

Note: question 5 was skipped. #tweetnmeet’s get exciting 🙂

Question 6: favorite TV show? Tie between The Office and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

Question 7: 1st KISS! I have no idea.

Question 7 (there were two question 7’s): favorite part of your job? Being able to show people exactly what I do, and show what impact it had for the client.

Question 9: if you could be an animal…what would you be/why? I would enjoy being a wolf; always thought they were a pretty animal, but they can be feisty, and you don’t want to mess with them.

Question 10: favorite dessert? Who makes it best? I do not have a big sweet tooth, but I do enjoy some red velvet cake on occasion. Whoever cooks it at that time makes it the best 🙂

Question 11: siblings? I am an only child.

Question 12: what astrological sign are you? Do the “traits” match your personality? I am a gemini. I think it fits well enough, but I’ll let you be the judge of that.

Question 13: do you blog? and what is your favorite blog to follow? Funny you ask that, since I’m blogging now 🙂 I don’t follow many blogs; it’s something I need to work on.

Question 14: one thing surprising thing about yourself NOT in your twitter bio. I used to be a huge nerd about U.S. Presidential history, once knowing all presidents in order, terms/years served, policies championed, family members, and more.

Question 15: if you could change your 1st name-what would you want it to be? I wouldn’t.

Question 16: 1st thing you notice in a sig. other? Physically, and personality. Well, first things I noticed with my current lady would include her blue eyes, her laugh, and her figure. I could tell that she was a very personable girl. I liked all of the mentioned traits.

Question 17: your life is a movie…who plays you? No idea… who’s a famous bald person: Howie Mandell (minus the soul patch)? Vin Diesel?

Question 18: favorite cheap munchie food. Think: college. lol. Chips and salsa; and if I am living the good life, I’ll melt cheese on the chips.

Question 19: sport you are the best at….and sport you wish you were better at? I was a jack-of-all-trades athlete, playing baseball, basketball, football, golf, tennis, and rugby in my life. I feel I was good to very good at all of them. I wish I was better at baseball or golf. If I had committed more time to just those sports, or just one of them, I would have gone far.

Question 20: in 140 characters tell an alien why they should let you live. 😉 I have too much unfinished business to deal with in my life. I’m just getting started.

If you can, join in on the next #tweetnmeet. I’ve been able to connect with a few new people, and always enjoy seeing the responses to the questions. You quickly learn about the people in and outside of your community.

#tweetnmeet with you soon!

 

~J

Minneapolis, St. Paul, Thank You! Now, Let’s Collaborate!

Yesterday was one of the more interesting and fulfilling days I have had as a professional. Most of us know about #Unfollowgate. If not; check out my previous post on #Unfollowgate and its impact on the Minneapolis and St. Paul online community.

Between the hundreds of views, 18 comments, numerous public tweets, re-tweets, even more direct messages, and even some text messages and calls, the outpouring of support for me was astonishing. Thank you all very much for that.

I want to get away from #Unfollowgate and move onto the larger issue: how to make the Minneapolis and St. Paul online community more collaborative, more unified, and considered as a true leader in the online marketing space.

I have been going over what Chris Brogan said when he was here at the Minnesota Business/Reputations event, about our shortcomings as a community. It would have been easy for him to say ‘Minneapolis/St. Paul, y’all are great! Keep Truckin’!’ for a cheap pop. He did not do that, and I thank him for that. For him to say (paraphrasing) ‘you have the talent here, you don’t have the collaborative atmosphere’, and to call out Pittsburgh as his numer one community was gutsy. He travels and connects with enough people from each community where I trust his opinion more than others.

This should be a wake up call for our community. We do have the talent, we have the case studies, we have the clients, we have the passion (as was shown yesterday). How do we combine all that and more to help our community move to the head of the online marketing class?

Let’s start a discussion answering a few questions. As a community:

• What are we doing right?
• What are we doing wrong?
• What are your concerns about the state of online marketing?
• What do we want to do?
• Where do we want to go?

Minneapolis, St. Paul, metro area, Minnesota: your thoughts?

#Unfollowgate: How This Effects The Minneapolis/St. Paul Online Community

True story. There is Watergate, Monicagate and numerous other ‘gates’. There has been no ‘gate’ that has captivated my attention. There has been no ‘gate’, until today that I have been involved in, until #unfollowgate.

In the last couple months, I have noticed certain people who have been quick to comment on certain tweets I have sent out. Monitoring the situation, I evaluated what I was sending, was it useful, entertaining and/or relevant? I overanalyze most everything in my life, so adding this to my plate was not ideal. Regardless, I never want to offend anyone, and try my best to be conscious of what I say.

That did not help.

This morning, I had someone tweet the following:

I just unfollowed @jasondouglas Checking in at work on FourSquare violates my view of ICEE #NothingPersonal.

I was shown this by a co-worker, who was as stunned as me. Being unfollowed is not uncommon. Being called out and made an example of to the world over something as petty as checking in on Foursquare where I work however, is bothersome.

Before moving forward, for those who do not know what ICEE stands for, here are the definitions:

• Inspire
• Connect
• Entertain
• Educate

All of the above are great rules to abide by when tweeting. It would be nice to have your tweet achieve all of the above. It is more difficult to inspire, connect, entertain, and educate in 140 characters than the average person would assume.

What is gained by calling someone out for not following your interpretation of the above ‘rules’? Isn’t unfollowing someone the opposite of connecting?

One person tweeted this to the unfollower:

so then what tweets don’t Inspire Connect Entertain or Educate? I think that covers any kind of tweet thats been written.

Agreed. I find it difficult to not achieve one of the four ICEE guidelines in any tweet that myself and any other Twitter user has ever sent.

In my experience in the social media community, I have been met with open arms by almost everyone I have connected with online and in real life. I have built and am building some great relationships with people I would not have been connected to if not for social media.

When someone calls me out, uses my name, and accuses me of not being inspiring, not being a connector, not entertaining, and not educating — all the while telling me it is not personal — I strongly disagree with that. Online or off, when you use someone’s name and use accusatory language, no matter how subjective it is, you have made it a personal attack.

This is why I monitor the conversation around my name in most every online channel. I need to make sure that my name is not being smeared by anyone. This is something I highly recommend doing ASAP; check to see what comes up in search results on Google, Yahoo, Bing, and others; see if there are any groups or fan pages created talking about you or people with the same name. Make sure you own your name. You are a brand.

Once the above tweet was sent out, I had 20 DMs in my inbox within the first five minutes asking if this was real. Unfortunately, it is.

When I attended the Minnesota Business/LaBreche Reputations event with guest Chris Brogan last month. Brogan made a statement about the Minneapolis and St. Paul online marketing community: We do not collaborate, we are too exclusive. It is a lot easier to fight a war with a large army. By not working together, the MSP area is not at the top of the online marketing communities where it belongs.

Behavior that I experienced today is exactly what Brogan was talking about. The MSP community does not benefit from someone trying to throw someone under the bus for self promotion. That is not how an individual becomes a true influencer. Any community that has people like that actively participating in the community is not a healthy community. If the MSP community wants to become a legitimate leading community, behavior like this must cease.

After numerous tweets from my army supporting me (thank you all :-))  the person tweeted the following:

“I won’t be publicizing my ICEE theory removes. Tweets should Inspire Connect Entertain Educate. Apparently is causing a stir.”

I wish he had thought of that before attempting to humiliate me.

I feel sad knowing our great community took a step back yesterday. I hope that our community learns from this and are able to take two steps forward.

This is not the first #Unfollowgate in the history of Twitter. I want to hear your #Unfollowgate story. How was it handled on both sides? Was there a reconciliation?

~J

So My Mom Joined ‘Tweeter’… I mean Twitter…

I believe my Mom meant Twitter; I am going with that anyway.

Two days ago, my Mom and I were talking about random topics. Suddenly, I hear her slip in ‘so I joined Twitter today… I’m following you…’. I did a double take when Mom said that. It was in fact true, my Mom was the newest person on Twitter!

For a moment, I was excited to hear this. I thought it would be a good way for my Mom to get involved in the social media world. I then thought “oh crap! My Mom can stalk me on here!”

It made me think for a minute: am I the only one with a parent on Twitter? I did a twitpoll about it, of which had surprising results. Of the 13 respondents, eight had a parent on Twitter. That seemed like a high number to me. I know that many of my friends have parents on Twitter; the fastest growing demographic on Facebook is the 35+ group. On Twitter, my perception is that it was a community dominated by youth. That perception is becoming more wrong by the day.

With my Mom on Twitter, it will not be a game changer. She has no idea how to tweet. Yes, she can look at my stream, then question me about it later, or ask about what my friends are saying, or ask what RT means. I welcome her to the community, and hope that they welcome her with open arms.

I hope she knows what she got herself into 🙂

~J

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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Social Media in Sports: How the Minnesota Timberwolves Are Connecting and Succeeding

If you haven’t noticed on twitter or facebook, professional sports organizations and athletes are taking an interest in using social media to further enhance their reach and their brand.

Teams such as the Minnesota Timberwolves have done a very good job with utilizing it to connect with fans on twitter through real-time game updates, promotions and giveaways, and team news updates. Here are some of the examples of how the Timberwovles have connected with fans through twitter.

At the end of February, the Timberwolves gave away a suite with 22 tickets for the Wolves v. TrailBlazers game on twitter. All you had to do was include a specific hashtag replying to the Timberwolves twitter account. I already had tickets to that game; I still sent a reply to the Wolves since a chance at a free suite is too much to pass up. Since I am mentioning this, it means that I ended up winning the suite for the game and 21 of my friends. Not only did the Wolves give me 22 tickets for a suite, Scott Spiridigliozzi, Manager of Interactive Services for the Timberwolves and one of the people behind the Timberwolves account, gave me a gift bag including a team poster, t-shirt, warmup jersey shirt highlighting the old Timberwolves logo, and a personalized card thanking me for participating in the twitter giveaway. Talk about going above and beyond to make myself and my friends happy. It was a very fun night with many friends, depsite the outcome. I would not have not had access to a suite without social media.

Last Sunday, the Timberwolves organized the first ever Timberwolves Tweetup in conjunction with Champps, a key sponsor of the Timberwolves. At the tweetup, all attendees were given a free upper-level ticket to the game, free beer was available for the 21 and over crowd, along with light appetizers and a chance at an upgrade to a pair of lower level seats.  The turnout for the tweetup was around 30 people. Most likely, those are people that would have not attended the game if it weren’t for the tweetup. The cost of the tweetup was a keg of domestic beer and for the light appetizers. As their tweetups become more established and recognized, this may become one of their main promotions, all because of social media.

Not all sports teams are using twitter like the Timberwolves. Most keep it to updates about the team, updates during the game, and do not interact with people.  Some of the players of the Timberwolves have created twitter accounts, including Mark Madsen, Brian Cardinal, Randy Foye, Mike Miller, and Kevin Love.

Other athletes in other professional sports are utilizing twitter to connect with fans. Lance Armstrong frequently updates his posts with pictures from where he is training, who he is meeting with about his Livestrong foundation, and occasionally replies to close friends. Shaquille O’Neal uses twitter to give away tickets to road games to the first twitter user to find him whereever he and the Phoenix Suns are playing at.

Athletes and celebrities gain high numbers of followers very quickly because of who they are and not because they provide relevant content, create or contribute to the conversation, or are true influencers. Common twitter users often feel that they are ‘friends’ of these celebrities, despite the lack of reciprocal following. Most everyone follows a few athletes, celebrities, even politicians. Who do you follow? Why do you follow them? Do they follow you back? Have you ever had them respond to a message or @ reply you sent them?

~Jason Douglas

twitter: @jasondouglas

Running With the Wolves 5K Recap

Today was the day where I finally tested myself in a race situation. This was not part of the original plan; the Minneapolis Half-Marathon was to be my racing debut. Thanks to my marathon running friend, Kenny, he informed me of ‘Run With the Wolves 5K‘ early this week. Upon hearing about it, I instantly signed up. I have not timed myself once since I started running; this race was going to provide me with the benchmark to establish my goal for future races.

Leading up to this morning, I did not get the night of rest I had hoped for. Staying out a little later than I had planned, my phone kept ringing after 1:30am. Not in the mood to talk, I finally fell asleep around 3am. Race time was only 6.5 hours away.

I woke up only getting four hours of sleep, but I felt really good. I chose to take two days off from running to allow my body to be fully rested. I had a banana and wheaties for breakfast around 8am, leaving me an hour and a half until race time. Check in was easy since I had preregistered. I grabbed my bag of goodies which included a game ticket for the Wolves/Nuggets game tomorrow, a 2008-2009 team yearbook, some Gatorade products for after the race, and other promotional propaganda. Before the race, there was a contest to see if anyone could guess how many hours of sleep current Timberwolves player Mark Madsen got last night. After a couple minutes of guessing, I guessed ‘4:15’, which was close enough, winning me a $50 gift certificate to Dick’s Sporting Goods. Bling!

After some relaxing with the crew, it was race time. My goal was to not take any walking breaks. Based on pure guesswork, I had myself pegged for running ten-minute miles (had not been timing my runs); start, run, finish; that was the plan.

I had never run around Lake Harriet; I am used to the flatter confines of Lake Calhoun, or the flatlands of Hopkins. Lake Harriet has some decent uphill parts to the course which were a nice test for me. I used the downhill parts as my ‘break’ within the race, a strategy I will use in future runs.  I kept a nice, steady pace throughout the race. My legs never felt fatigued, further verifying I need to start pushing myself further. I kept seeking out landmarks along the course to use as a ‘checkpoint’. I hope I do not have to keep doing that to motivate myself. At the end of the race, I felt a sense of accomplishment, finishing the race how I wanted to: start, run, finish. I now know how it will feel to cross the finish line.

Now for the analysis of the race: I felt good during the whole race. My right trapezius felt tight from the halfway point on; that has happened a couple times before, not sure what that is from (there is no soreness now), my lungs felt good, my pace was consistent; overall, the experience was solid. The only negative to come of this: there was a guy that was sprinting as far as he could, then walked when he was tired. This was repeated four or five times. I thought the tortoise (me) would beat the hare (other guy). Unfortunately, sprint walking guy sprinted past me in the last 50 meters. I was not too happy about that.

My official time was 30 minutes and 14 seconds for a 9 minute and 45 second per mile pace. That slightly exceeded my expectations of ten minute miles.  If I was to keep that pace during the half-marathon, I would complete that race in 2 hours 7 minutes and 40 seconds. Long term, I would like to get below 9 minutes per mile; that might take a little while.

After the race, Ken, Alex, and myself got the chance to talk with Mark Madsen about twitter (he’s now following me… bling!), basketball, and other random things. He’s a very nice guy and was very accessible. We also got a photo with him. I can not wait to get the photos of today from Brit. Thanks to Brit and Marlee for taking pics!

Thanks to everyone for the kind and encouraging words. Today was a step closer to the half-marathon. 57 days away, but who is counting?

~Jason Douglas

twitter: @jasondouglas

Facebook’s Homepage Facelift

Remember just a few months ago when millions petitioned against the ‘new facebook’? You’re finally getting used to the ‘new facebook’, seeing that it does have some nice qualities.

Obviously, the people at facebook do not like their members to get comfortable.  Soon, users will see a new facebook homepage which according to some, is making Facebook more closely resemble Twitter

Some of the notable changes:

• Facebook’s popular ‘News Feed’ will be updated in real-time.
• Filters are located in the sidebar, allowing you to control who you see updates from (friends, family, network based)
• Statuses are more than just text and links; they can include pictures and videos now

Those are the big changes that I noticed.  Wired.com has more facebook changes in their blog with screenshots comparing the old and new.

I am going to like having the news feed updated in real-time; refreshing for new statuses was a small annoyance.  The filter system, if I understand it properly, reminds me of tweetdeck; to have high school friends, college friends, co-workers and more in their own respective group should clean out a lot of the ‘rif-raf’ that can clutter ones facebook news feed.

Personally, I like change.  I was one of four fans of the ‘new facebook’ when that was released, and this will only help enhance the facebook user experience.  Changes like these should be embraced, not petitioned against.

Will this be the last change we see for a while?  Facebook needs to develop a consistency so users can become familiar with everything that facebook has to offer.  With changes every few months, we will always be playing catch up.

Hopefully, these changes will bring a more reliable chat system and not ban certain users 🙂

~Jason Douglas

twitter: @jasondouglas