The world of internet is not only informative, but also entertaining for us. Our online social networking has grown to become more important to us than the physical world. The challenge lies in securing ones personal information, both in the cyber and real world - keeping your personal details and important information protected in real life is considerably easier than the online world – where the concept of privacy is very loose and your information can fall into wrong hands quite easily.
You protect your social networking accounts with strong passwords, keep up-to-date browser and avoid dubious links; you can still be targeted by hackers. Hackers leave no gaps or weakness to attack your account and gain access to your valuable, personal information. Here are few ways through which you can recover your compromised social media accounts.
1. Change your password immediately
If you come across unusual activity on your social network account, which makes your suspicious of some dubious activity or unknown content posted on your account or by accident you clock on a suspicious link; immediately go to the main source of the social network website and change your password. Also, to ensure the safety of your account it is highly recommended that you avoid using a third-party client, such as Tweetdeck.
Follow the following steps if you are not able to access your account:
Twitter Users: Make sure you access the main source of your Twitter account from another computer. Once on the main source page, in order to reset your password, go into the log-in menu and select the option “reset password”. Following the command, Twitter will generate an email to the address you added in your Twitter profile. The email contains instruction to reset the new password. Make sure to reset the password from another computer – change of computers is necessary to ensure the security of your password.
If you encounter issues in following the process of resetting your password or you are unable to access the page, then visit http://support.twitter.com and file a support ticket. Don’t forget to follow instructions to the core.
Facebook Users: If you fear that your account has been hacked or face problems to access it, best way is to visit www.facebook.com/hacked and begin the process of reclaiming your account. For better security, visit this website from a different computer.
2. Change Privacy Settings of the new Account
After changing your password or making a new account, change the privacy settings to avoid any further attacks by the hackers. Also, temporarily revoke access to all apps and add-ons associated with your hacked account. In addition to changing your privacy settings, take preventive steps to avoid misuse of your account – delete apps or add-ons that haven’t been in use for a long time.
3. Use Anti-Virus Software
Make sure that you use effective anti-virus software to clean all kinds of obnoxious virus and malware away from your computers, particularly when your account has been hacked. Scan your computer with up-to-date and popular antivirus software.
4. Delete unwanted posts
Last, but definitely an important step is to delete any unwanted posts from your account, which have been posted during the compromise – this is to ensure the not only yours but safety of others in your network, who may accidently click onto the links in earlier posts and suffer the same fate as yours.
Caution for smartphone users
Usually, in the cell phones, accounts are hacked by injecting cell phone spyware through the internet. Smartphone users can also apply aforementioned four steps while logging in to their social network accounts from their Android phones or iPhones.
About the Guest Author:
James Clark has been in the business of providing quality information on Spy Software for Cell phones for a while now. He's an expert at all things spyware, but his main forte is iPhone spyware which has captured the interest of many. You can connect to James on twitter.
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