Although social media are treated as boon in recent days it bring few risks along with it. It is always better to have knowledge of being safe in any social media.
Here are few ways about how one can protect ones social media profiles.
Run a social media virus/malware scan:
There are now a few anti-virus and anti-malware programs that will scan the content on your Facebook wall. For example Norton offers service to scan all posts on your wall for virus, malware, or links to risky websites and highlights posts, comments and links that you should probably delete.
Increase strength of your password:
One can increase the strength of password in many ways like increasing the size of password (at least 8 character long), by using few words squashed together (eg.ChickenKittens), by using combination of numbers and letters. Using capital letter in-between also helps to increase the strength of password. Using common real words or your name or user name or your favorite instrument name as password is not a good idea. It will decrease the strength of your password which will be easy for hackers.
Stop answering private questions on social media:
When creating your secret answers for any website, you should never use the questions and answers that appear on your social media accounts. For example, a commonly used question is your mother’s maiden name. However, on social media such as Facebook, you probably have your mother as a family member. One can see your mother and find her maiden name easily.
Use different email account for different social media account:
It is good for two reasons. The first is because if your email account is hacked you need not worry about all of your social medias and secondly if someone assume that you use one email address for all your social media. It will result in the trying to conduct brute force attacks on your social media sites with the wrong email address.
Avoid using password in digital form:
Type your password only in the small box provided in the social media sites. If password is entered anywhere else (eg. an email, IM chat) it would be easy for the hackers to detect your password. Also make sure same password is not used more than once for anything.
