How to Tell If Your Social Media Has Suffered a Breach
Some social media hacks are easy to detect, while others are not so obvious. Aside from the major signs that your account has been hacked, like being unable to sign in to your account or posts that you didn’t publish appearing on your profile, there are many other ways you can tell if your account has been hacked. Read this week’s Zlog and find out if your social media has been hacked. In the end, we will also share with you some tips on how to prevent this from happening to you.
Signs That Your Gmail Account Has Been Hacked
Your Gmail account is the gateway to all of your other social media sites, and usually, all other online platforms that require email registration. Plus, since it’s the most widely used email service in the world, Gmail is often a target of malicious hackers. If your Gmail account gets exposed, the damage can leak over to all other social media accounts you’re using on that email address and cause you a lot of headaches. Fortunately, there are a couple of easy and quick ways you can find out if your Gmail is hacked.
Last Account Activity
This is a long-time Gmail feature not many users are aware of. It shows you the last ten logins along with the current login details. It also includes location and IP address details, as well as the device that accessed the mail. All of this can help you quickly find out if anyone has been snooping around your e-mails. To access this feature, all you need to do is click on the “last account activity” button at the footer of your Gmail account.
Email Forwarding
Useful for online businesses, email forwarding allows users to forward any email coming to their accounts to any other account. However, since this feature is not that known among casual online users, people never check to see if someone else also has access to their emails. Hackers, who usually like to keep track of all of your activities, often adjust the settings so that every email you send or receive is forwarded to their account. To check this, simply go to the forwarding page and see if your emails are being forwarded to any other Gmail account.
Signs That Your Facebook or Instagram Account Has Suffered a Breach
Facebook has a reputation of often mishandling data from its users, and if this isn’t enough on its own, the company has suffered several breaches over the years. Even with this, Facebook remains as the most popular social network in the world and a haven for hackers and identity thieves.
There are two telltale signs that you can check for to see if your Facebook has suffered a breach or not. The first thing you can do to see if someone has hacked your account is to go to the “Where you have logged in” setting in the “Security and Login” tab. If you see an unfamiliar location or device, it means that somebody else also has access to your account. The second sign is even easier to spot – spammy messages and posts. Did you ever receive such messages from friends and family members? If you did, the high chances are that the messages they sent you were through a spam bot, and if you clicked on them, your device would also get the same malware.
The situation on Instagram doesn’t differ that much from Facebook. Signs that you should watch for when using Instagram are pretty similar to those we mentioned in regards to Facebook. Moreover, you can generally apply them to find out if your social media has been hacked across every website of this type. The best thing you can do is to take precautionary measures and double-check everything you do to see if you notice any suspicious or unusual activities.
How to Prevent Hacker Attacks With a VPN
While it’s a common misconception that VPN services can protect you from viruses and malware, they are indeed more than capable of safeguarding your devices from hacker attacks. Top VPN services, like ZoogVPN, come with the latest encryption standards that not only hide your IP address but also protect all of your sensitive personal and financial information from getting in the wrong hands.
Of course, besides getting a tested and reliable VPN service like ZoogVPN, we also recommend you use anti-virus software you trust. This is simply to put that extra layer of security to your devices, which will deter hackers from trying to breach your devices. Remember, the number one reason why people get hacked is their lack of security measures. Make sure your online security is as good as it gets and get a military-grade VPN service today, for just a couple of bucks per month.
- Yaroslav S.CEO at ZoogVPN. Yaroslav is a versatile manager with extensive customer support experience. His historical background and a deep passion for philosophy perfectly complete a real desire to create meaningful content and tech products.
