A friend of mine recently bitterly lamented her woe to me when her 300K Facebook likes/followers E-Commerce business page was hacked and hijacked from her. In fact, putting myself in her shoes and taking into consideration the amount of time and money spent in growing a page from 100 followers to a whopping 300 thousand followers, I became so sad.
Unfortunately, this is what has been the norm recently. Hackers are working every day around the clock to find loopholes in security and privacy on social platforms (and other internet space) and exploiting them to the detriment of its users, leaving uses stranded and always afraid of losing their account to some ‘jack-ass’ hacker who is perhaps doing it for the fun of it or for business purposes.
Guess What! Social Media Influencers suffer the most because their accounts have automatically become a target by default. Personal, less busy account accounts get hacked once a while but mostly, it is the influencers that suffer the most usually. The funny thing is, these hackers get done with their ‘foolishness’ change every detail on the account then sell the account to others.
In case you have suffered this painful account hack or looking for ways to protect your social media account, let’s look at simple, yet effective ways to keep your Social Media pages or accounts free from hackers in this article.
1. Regularly Change Your Password.
When was the last time you have changed the password on any of your Social Media accounts? I am guessing, not quite. Well, as basic as it may seem, changing your password for your account regularly helps protect your account and reduces the risk of being hacked.
I can tell you for a fact that some of us cannot even recollect the password strings we used on Facebook or on Twitter. Since the hackers give themselves no rest until they hack your account, you also must be vigilant if you want to deny them the opportunity of intruding into your privacy.
You can, therefore, schedule the change of your password every three or six months interval and stick to it. You can set a reminder on your mobile devices and once you get the alert, make sure to do it immediately and not put it off. The interval helps in the sense that, hackers try every means possible, laying traps for you to fall in and this concept could take months. One thing a hacker has is patience, and since you are not the only one, they still have a lot of options to always go over until someone falls prey.
2. Do Not Use The Same Password Across Platforms
It is very important that we do not use the same password string on all our various social media accounts. One of the lies we keep in our mind when we use the same password on these platforms is that ‘so it could be easier for me to log in’. There is nothing like that when you are an internet security-conscious perform like me.
Never make the mistake of using the same password throughout your social media accounts or any other very important account. You already know once one is hacked, you probably saved them the hustle of the hacking process for other similar social accounts.
One of the things that eased synchronization on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter is the linking of account and cross-platform posting. As much as this is good and easy, it also has its downside. Once a hacker is able to have access to say your Facebook he or she can equally access your Instagram with ease. This leads us to our next point.
3. Use Very Strong Password
Well, I guess this is one of the things people hate – using a very strong and complicated password as a login credential. Why go through the hustle when I could just use an easy password, something relatable to me to remember. The times for using the easy and related passwords like your name and your birthday (or both) has long passed. I am guessing this was okay when the web has surfaced, but now things have become much more complicated and you can’t make that mistake anymore.
One very sure way to keep all your passwords very strong like [email protected]!$GR(_^TG (which of course is very difficult to guess) is using password managers. Some people don’t trust password managers but let me try and explain how they work;
A password manager is a software or web-based application that is able to suggest and keep very strong passwords for you. What you should know is that you can actually keep all strong password on this application, but have a master password to login it. Think of it as a safe vault. You don’t need to remember all the passwords you use on all platforms, NO. All you need to do is to keep your main vault password in your mind that all. The question you should be asking is which is trustworthy and better? I always recommend LASTPASS. It’s available on all apps stores and as a browser extension. It is easier to use on desktop though.
4. Use Two-Factor Authentication
This is mostly the most common way of protecting your social media accounts lately. Two-Factor Authentication also known as 2FA means going through two processes of authenticating the login credential of a user. Some platforms use email and other use text message as the second form of authentication. Recently Facebook and other platforms introduced the approved authentication apps process as the second factor. Apps such as Google Authenticator are now used to authenticate users.
Follow this post below to set up your 2FA
How to Setup Two Factor Authentication on Facebook and Instagram
5. Avoid Unnecessary Third Party Access
For some people, the above measures are a routine for them and they religiously follow but they may forget the authorization of some not so useful or credible third-party applications and platforms. This is mainly used as a login on other platforms without necessarily going through their account creation process, which may cost you if you fall into the wrong hands.
