You should have these five tools to protect your Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social media accounts
Social media has taken the world by storm through dozens of websites, mobile apps, and other forms of technologies improving the way people communicate with each other. There are social media sites that have millions of members allowing them to share photos, videos, text messages, and more on a regular basis. In fact, social media now accounts for almost 80 percent of the time we spend online. We are all members of Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus or other social media accounts and these accounts are often prone to hacking.
One of the main reasons for hacking of your social media accounts is loss of password. Hackers gain access to your password by social engineering, brute force or dictionary attack method. These risks stretch from innocent fun to serious reputational damage, financial troubles and even legal persecution in the event that a hacked account is used for committing a crime.
Therefore protecting your social media accounts is very important and here are the five software tools can provide you with some degree of social media protection:
LastPass
The most common mistake one can make is to have a simple and obvious password or use one single password for all accounts – from Internet banking to an email account. Just the other day we had reported that “123456,” “password,” “12345,” “12345678” and “qwerty” are the most used passwords and most easily hackable ones.
LastPass is a freemium password management service that stores encrypted passwords in the cloud. The service is able to save existing passwords as well as generate new ones. It provides two-factor authentication, and the only password a user has to remember and never lose is a master password for the LastPass itself. Your password should ideally be 16 digits and contain at least one number, one uppercase letter, one lowercase letter and one special symbol. The strength of a password can be measured by the Password Meter. Experts recommend changing the master password once every 10 weeks.
LogDog
LogDog is a free product designed to track any suspicious activity related to social media accounts. The system continuously scans various indicators of unauthorized access. When an attack is detected, LogDog sends intrusion alerts and lets users take back control over their accounts. Currently, it’s only available for Android devices. Also, some social networks like Facebook allow you to receive an alert when anyone logs into the account from a new device or browser. This feature must be switched on.
HTTPS Everywhere
If devices used for social media access are shared with others or frequently taken to public places, it is better to protect them with an extra security layer by encrypting the traffic from a browser to a social network. HTTPS Everywhere is a free browser extension that switches websites from HTTP (unsecured) to HTTPS (secured).
AVG PrivacyFix
AVG PrivacyFix is a free application that helps users to adjust privacy settings for Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn and Twitter and also block unwanted tracking. It’s currently available for Chrome, Android and iOS.
Digi.me (formerly SocialSafe)
Another freemium tool, Digi.me is designed to store social media data in case all information is lost as a result of hacking. It allows you to back up and view content from up to four of your social media accounts.
