Tips On How To Secure Your Social Media Accounts From Hackers
It is no longer news that a lot of social media accounts are being hacked daily. It is so painful to have built a strong social media presence and eventually lose it to the hands of social media hackers.
These social media criminals do not only hack accounts, but also use those accounts to defraud the owners’ friends, family and loved ones.
They also use hacked accounts to get linked to other accounts the affected account is linked to. For example, someone whose Google accounts gets hacked has made it easy for the hackers to get free and easy access to other linked accounts.
Regrettably, internet hackers also steal your personal information for evil acts.
However, a lot of measures have been put in place by social media developers to help you secure your accounts from being tampered with by these hackers.
The following tips will guide you on how to protect your social media accounts easily without struggle.
1. CREATE A STRONG PASSWORD FOR ALL YOUR ACCOUNTS
To secure your account from cybercrime, you must create a strong and unique password. Using your name or any easy words that can easily be decoded would only open your account to danger.
For example, using passwords like “babygirlforlife”, “adejokeifeoluwa”, “12345” puts such social media accounts at high risk of being hijacked from its user.
Most social media accounts require you to add special characters and numbers to create a unique password.
2. TWO-FACTOR AUTHENTICATION
This is a secure and an amazing way to keep your account free from cyber fraudsters. This feature enables you to render a randomly generated code before you can log into an account. Facebook, for example, gives recovery codes to users for safe logins into their accounts. This makes it hard for hackers to penetrate your account easily because this is a high level of security. Other apps like Instagram, Snapchat and WhatsApp also have this feature to reduce the rate of social media hijacking.
3. SAVE YOUR PASSWORDS ON GOOGLE WITH TIGHT SECURITY
Changing your passwords regularly protects your account from being hijacked. But to be on a safer side, make sure you save those passwords in your Google account.
You must also ensure that your Google account is under tight security, because you might lose all your social media accounts once it is hacked by the cyber fraudsters.
4. DON’T SHARE YOUR PASSWORD WITH ANYONE
Sharing your login details including passwords endangers your social media accounts. This can be done consciously or unconsciously. Writing your login details in notes, pads and other writing materials might be putting you in danger. The notes can end up somewhere else and might be used by these cyber criminals.
Also, sharing passwords with your friends would put your accounts at a high risk of being tampered with.
5. AVOID OPENING YOUR ACCOUNT ON A STRANGER OR FRIENDS PHONE
This is one of the popular ways hackers get to penetrate people’s social media platforms.
Logging into your social media accounts on someone else’s phone opens your accounts to danger.
This is because logging out most of the time can be so hard due to poor network connection and other factors.
For example, logging out of your Gmail account on someone’s phone takes proper knowledge of how it works. A person who is not conversant with this process of logging out will not be able to make his or her way round it.
No matter the urgency around you, always take your time to ensure you have successfully logged out your account before leaving the person.
6. SECURE YOUR MOBILE PHONE
Almost every social media user has their social media account details on their mobile phone. Most people do not log out of their accounts after use since they believe it is their personal property.
However, carefully ensuring that your phone is properly secure entails adding a passcode and other security measures to stop strangers from gaining access to your personal information.
You can as well log out of your accounts in order to secure your social media account details. This will make your social accounts secure if your device gets lost or stolen.
7. USE LOGIN ALERTS
This has saved a lot of social media accounts from being hijacked by hackers. This feature sends an instant warning to you once your social media account is being tampered with.
This allows you to take quick action before the perpetrator gains further access to your accounts.
For example, Facebook goes as far as stating the location and the type of device used in a login attempt into your account.
You should set this up in your “settings” section on all your social media apps.