Our Five Tips on How to Keep Social Media Accounts Safe
You’ve most likely heard about the security meltdown Twitter experienced a few days ago, in which dozens of influential Twitter users, including Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Barack Obama, had their accounts hacked and used for a coordinated social engineering attack. With that said, such attacks have happened before and will likely happen again on each one of the popular social media services. With social media being a critical part of personal, but also business lives for most of us, in this Zlog post, we decided to shine a light on this issue and discuss how you can avoid falling into cyber traps. Read on to learn our five tips on how to keep social media accounts safe from hackers.
1. Steer Clear of Third-party Apps
Using native social media apps can be dangerous enough if you’re not careful. But, when you use third-party apps, you’re sharing valuable information with an outer side that’s not directly connected with the social media service. It’s always a good idea to read the fine print and allow only legitimate and trustworthy apps to gain access to your social media login credentials and private information.
If you must use third-party apps, be sure to read the T&Cs to get info on what exactly you’re authorizing access for the particular app, as some apps require only minimum permissions. If you already have such apps installed on your devices, go through their settings to determine what you’ve allowed, and revoke access if necessary.
2. Stop Cross-connecting Social Media Services
When you download a new app, you probably don’t think much about cross-connecting it to the rest of your social media accounts. For example, Instagram allows you to log in by using Facebook and many other apps you have on your phone. While this may seem like a convenient way of using this service, it’s something you should try and avoid at all costs.
If your Facebook credentials fall into the wrong hands, you can lose all of your related accounts. With that in mind, it’s best to create unique credentials for every app and service and use individual logins. This does take a bit more time but can save you from a lot of headaches in the future.
3. Avoid Being Redirected to Other Platforms
Every social media platform allows its users to insert embedded links into posts, pictures, or videos. Clicking on these will redirect you to a site or post the person who posted wanted to share with you. But, such a system opens up a lot of opportunities for hackers who embed links to shady sites on which they can extract all of the information from your device.
That’s why you should exercise caution and not click on any links if you have any doubts about whether the site is legit. Avoiding clicking on embedded posts plays a significant role in keeping your social media accounts safe.
4. Use Two-Factor Authentication
Two-factor authentication is an increasingly popular topic on the internet, with more and more websites and apps introducing it into their services. In simple terms, this is a security principle in which you have to confirm your identity by using two different identification components. For most sites, this comes in the form of a confirmation code sent to your phone number or email.
Most popular social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, offer two-factor authentication to their users. And, you should undoubtedly take advantage of this and enable it everywhere its offered. The few additional steps are well worth taking for the extra security layer you will get in return.
5. Use a VPN
A VPN can protect all of your valuable and sensitive information that you share with the social media platform. More importantly, it can help you secure your connection and protect you from man-in-the-middle attacks, which are most commonly used in social media account breaches. If you often use your phone on public Wi-Fi to surf on Facebook or Instagram, as most people do, a VPN is a no-brainer. With just one tap, you can encrypt your internet connection and mask your real IP location.
If you’re not much of a tech geek, you can opt for a streamlined and intuitive VPN that will allow you to easily manage across different platforms and keep all of your accounts safe and private. ZoogVPN is super simple to use and comes with sleek apps for every device in your household. Sign up today and protect all of your social media user credentials.
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.
