How to safeguard social media against hacking

By Sarah Guenther
Mar 24, 2017
3 min read

Let’s say you’re the social media manager of a major company, tasked with running the Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and YouTube accounts. One day you’re perusing your Facebook feed when you notice a post shared by your company that you never authorized. What do you do next? How did this happen?

These are questions that social media managers often ask themselves when something goes awry with one (or several) of their accounts. If you find yourself in this situation, know that you’re not the only, or first person, that this has ever happened to. And know that there are steps you can take to resolve the situation and ensure it doesn’t happen again.

The first thing you need to know is that security is everything. Extra security is never a bad thing and though it can be annoying, it is important. Always enable two-step verification, which usually entails a code that is texted to you to so that the account you’re trying to sign into can verify that you are the person you say you are.

Another good tip to ensure the security of your social media accounts is to disconnect any third-party apps that aren’t absolutely necessary. Twitter and Instagram often ask if you want to authorize outside applications and while this can seem useful and important, sometimes apps that you didn’t even know had access to your account can fall under the radar. Doing a thorough examination of the security measures already in place on each of your accounts is a good way to make sure you know what is and isn’t allowed access.

Another good tip to ensure you have the best security possible is to create strong passwords and change them every three to six months. A password for anything, let alone a social media account, should not include any personal information or easily guessable words. Using various combinations of letters, numbers and symbols makes it almost impossible for hackers to figure out your password, thus making it difficult for your account to be hacked. At the same time, you should always create unique passwords for each account and never reuse the same password.

In the event that one of your accounts is hacked, you should immediately change your password as well as the password of the email you used to sign up for that account. This makes it harder for the hacker to change the new password in case they’ve gained access to your email account too.

The next thing you should do is to unauthorize any apps you’ve allowed access to your account and run a virus scan on your computer in case a virus is the culprit. Lastly, message anyone that was sent a message through your account and explain what happened. You may also need to explain to all your followers what happened (as well as delete any posts that weren’t supposed to go out), so that your stakeholders are aware of what’s happened.

One last set of tips is to educate all employees dealing directly with your company’s social media accounts about proper security etiquette, as well as what to do if something does happen.

While it’s never good when a social media or email account is hacked, there are ways to safeguard yourself against such attacks and when they do happen, you get the chance to better prepare yourself should it ever happen again.