It used to be a hacker’s dream to crack the password code for someone’s email account. No, thanks to social media, they have all kinds of ways of attempting to get into people’s private information because, for better or for worse, social media accounts don’t just include casual correspondences between friends, but tons of sensitive information as well.
Are you looking for ways to protect your social media accounts? You’ve come to the right place.

Don’t go easy on the passwords. If you remember the early days of having an email account, you could darn near use the word “dog” as a password and it would work. These days, it’s a lot more complicated and that’s definitely for our benefit. Make sure that all of your passwords have characters, numbers and symbols in them and try not to use the same one for several different accounts. Also, it doesn’t hurt to switch them up every couple of months. Look at it this way: You’re keeping the hackers guessing. They hate that.

Stop. Look. Listen (well, read).**** An online exchange is not something that we should take as lightly as, say, a phone conversation. That’s because we can usually tell if someone’s voice is not their own, but it’s harder to detect if their keystrokes are. When you receive a message from someone you know, but the subject heading seems strange, their message is out of character or the link appears to be totally unfamiliar, don’t reply to the message. Open up a new one and email them directly to see if they’ve been looking for you.

Check your cell phone. If you have a password lock for your phone, you should probably use it. Either way, if you do a lot of social media stuff on your phone (including with Facebook and Twitter), make sure to log out each and every time you finish. If you fail to do this, you leave yourself extremely vulnerable. Sure, it may be your phone, but that doesn’t mean that people aren’t wanting access to what’s in it.

Regularly check your apps and add-ons. You might be surprised how many are attached to possible security breaches. So, the ones that you’re not using, make sure to delete. Also, when it comes time to update your browser, don’t neglect to do that as well. Each time that there is an “upgrade”, there are new security features added to keep your accounts just that much more protected.

Report any “break ins”. All social media platforms have a “Help” area where you can do your own form of social media reporting. If your account has been compromised, it doesn’t just affect you, but on many levels, it affects the network that you’re using as well. Make sure to let them know and keep in mind that they will not ask you for your password to verify any information. If you get an email like that, it’s probably another attempt to hack into your account. Be cautious in how you handle that kind of email, so that you won’t have to do these steps all over again.