We all like being connected with our friends and those that matter to us at all times, and social media platforms brought to our lives the perfect way to do so. Platforms like Facebook, Twitter or Instagram allow us to connect not only with our friends, but also with strangers from all over the world or even help us keep up with our favourite celebrities. We put a lot of us in our social media accounts, which makes them very tempting for cybercriminals wanting access to our private information. Down below, you will find some useful tips to increase your social media accounts’ security, so you can enjoy these platforms without having to worry about cyberattacks.
Why do cybercriminals go after our accounts?
The popularity of social media platforms has been on the rise for the last 2 decades. Recent studies show that around 45% of the global population uses social media, spending an average of 2 hours online per day. These days you can find a big variety of social media platforms that cater to the needs of every type of user, with the most popular ones being Facebook (used by 87% of social media users), YouTube (being the most popular among 76% of young social media users) and Instagram (with a solid 54% of the online social media population).
With social media platforms being so popular among such a wide part of the population, a new economy has risen around these webs. Users are in many ways treated as numbers, not only by the brands or advertising that promote themselves in these platforms, but also by cyberattackers. Websites like https://hackprofiles.me/ allow us to test our social media’s accounts levels of protection, allowing us to know just how easy it would be for a hacker to access all our information.
There are many reasons that can incentivize a hacker to go after our social media’s accounts, but the most popular ones tend to be:
- Impersonate your identity: Hackers will use all the information they can get with your account to impersonate you and try to make your acquaintances fall for their tricks.
- Damage your reputation: Hackers can use your account to post sensitive content (violent videos, racist remarks, etc). In this day and era where even our employers check our social media accounts, this can be absolutely terrible for our reputation.
- Monitor your moves: hackers can check what you post to get an idea of your routine and perform real life crimes based on it. For example, they can hack you to know when you will be leaving for your next holiday, then break into your home once they know it will be empty.
- Use your account to commit more cybercrimes.
Because of this, increasing our social media accounts’ security should always be among our top priorities.
How to increase our social media accounts’ levels of security
Hacking may seem like something terrifying, but truth to be told, it only tends to happen to people with accounts that have low levels of security. If we keep the following things into account, our social media accounts should remain out of harm’s way:
- Implement a 2-step verification process: most social media platforms allow you to implement this method when login to your account. This way, when you log into your account, you will need to introduce not only your password, but also a code that will be sent to your phone, making the hackers work way harder.
- Use a strong password and change it periodically: it is recommended that we use a password that includes a mixture of uppercase and lowercase characters, numbers and symbols. We should use a different password for each site we use and change it periodically in case it ever gets compromised.
- Do not click on any suspicious link: hackers can send us disguised links, sometimes even from our friends’ accounts, if their accounts have been already compromised. These links always seem legit and harmless, but as soon as we click on them, the hacker will gain access to our accounts too.
If we implant these easy steps into our social media routines and always keep an open eye for any hacking attempt, our social media accounts will remain as a safe space.
