Is Your Twitter Account Safe?
You see it happen from time to time: twitter accounts that suddenly send out a strange message. Mainly in the form of a Direct Message. And then, suddenly, it happens to you. Today, at around 10h30 CET my twitter account sent out DMs containing the text 'This you????' and a link. Let me tell you: it is not funny. You feel, and probably are, responsible for it and maybe people trust you enough to click on the malicious link. Fortunately, some of my followers replied immediately with questions and warnings, so I could act quickly, albeit too late to stop the DMs.
Anyway, I have learned something from it, which I think is good to share. So here are my five tips which I hope will prevent you from experiencing the same thing:
- Make sure you have a password that Twitter considers to be 'Very Strong'. Use upper and lower case character, use numbers and use special characters all in your password. Make sure it is at least 8 characters long.
- Change your password regularly.
- Do not enter your account/password combination on other sites. Use the Twitter oAuth functionality.
- Regularly go to Settings > Connections and verify if you still want all these applications to have access to your twitter account.
- If you find out: immediately let people know what's going on. Apologise, explain and thank them for warning you.
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