On the Internet, privacy and security are major concerns, especially as hacking on Twitter is more rampant than ever.
In order to protect your Twitter account from hackers – be they intentionally targeting your account, or including you in a systematic sweep – follow these five tips, below.
1. Create unique passwords across all your social accounts. As happened with Wired’s Mat Honan, once hackers gain entry into one account, they can seamlessly slide inside all your profiles if you use the same password. Can’t remember all those 8-letter-and-symbol combinations? Here are five password-management apps that might be of use.
2. Monitor your third-party apps. It can be hard to keep track of all the apps you’ve given permission to access any of your social media profiles, but it’s important to stay on top of what external sites have access to your personal information and activity. While you can keep tabs on each network individually – find which apps have access to your Twitter by clicking on “Settings,” then “Apps” – MyPermissions makes this process super simply by linking directly to app permissions pages for Facebook, Twitter, Google, Yahoo, LinkedIn, Dropbox, Instagram and Flickr.
3. Don’t click on links from people you don’t know. Have you received a DM or @mention that looks like this?
Don’t click. If you suspect the sender is a legitimate contact and you might be misreading their message, verify with them over email or text message before clicking on any links.
4. Make sure your computer and operating system are up-to-date with the most recent upgrades and anti-virus software. Arm yourself against hackers and bots by ensuring the machine you’re tweeting on is as secure as possible.
5. Always sign out when you’re done, especially on public computers, and use your smartphone’s passlock capability. If you’re logged into Twitter – or any site for that matter – on a computer that’s not exclusively yours, sign out before leaving. It’s also a good idea to utilize the passlock functionality on your smartphone. The goal is to make it as hard as possible for hackers to do their thing.
Do you have anything to add to our list?
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