The recent "hacking" of the Twitter account of Associated
Press highlights the vulnerability of the
platform. In this Magazine Weblog entry we explain what steps you can take
as a user to ensure the security of your account.
A couple of days ago we learned how easy it is to access the
official Twitter account of a media as AP and what that can mean :
the impact on the stock market was a fall of 143 points, from 14,697 up to
14,554 .
Far from the story, the event exposes a security problem that is
easily fixed by both of those responsible for the micro blogging platform as
its users. By Twitter, the solution is to implement, login, verification
in two steps, as have Google (How
to activate two-step verification on your Google account), Drop
box (How to activate
two-step verification Drop box) and other platforms.
The "hack" by so much talk these days, is a way to
bypass the security mechanisms in order to forcibly break into a computer
system, your Twitter account, in this case. These mechanisms are diverse
and the best known are the Trojans (hidden software that serves as a remote
tool to violate the input), the partial attack denial of service (get a machine
that consumes many resources and become vulnerable) and phishing (access
stealing a user account and password using cheating methods). Of all
these, you should know especially phishing defend is the most common form of
"hacking" of your Twitter account.
Before viewing the basic measures (date) you must take in
Twitter, as a user, to ensure your security, we recommend reading the following
articles published at the time in Weblog Magazine: eight recommendations to avoid
taking risks in social networks and How to make sure your Twitter
account in 5 steps .
1. Create unique passwords on all your social networking
accounts. If someone gets on an account, and you have the same
password on all the social networks, it is very easy to access them
all. In All Twitter we recommend these five applications for you to manage your passwords.
Passwords must be at least 10 characters long and contain
letters, numbers and punctuation. Another good habit is to change your
passwords every so often. If you want to facilitate the work of hackers,
choose as password "123456" or the name of your girlfriend.
Two. Check third-party applications. There may be
applications developed with the sole purpose of fraudulently breaking your
Twitter account. Download applications only from those suppliers who will
inspire confidence and reviews, from time to time, which ones you really
need. Enter in Settings.
Applications and click on the "Revoke Access" for
applications that want to delete.
You can use applications on your phone as My Permissions to
facilitate the work or extensions for Chrome as My Permissions Cleaner.
Three. Do not click suspicious messages. One of the
methods of deception in phishing is sending messages with links to spoofed
pages, where you invite type your username and password. These pages are
clones of known sites (could be the home of Twitter, for example). If you
receive a mention or a DM with a link style "I've seen this photo of you
http://t.co ...." do not ever click. If the sender is one of your
contacts, check the contents before opening the link, sending an email.
Another way to avoid problems is always accessing Twitter pages
by typing the URL directly into the browser address bar. Neither Twitter
nor anyone else will send never, under any circumstances, an email asking you
your login credentials in the account.
It is essential not to open any file messages coming from
unknown or participate in the classic chain e-mails. Be wary of emails
that you receive and their attachments, and activate the anti-spam filters of
your email client.
April. Tune your computer. This is
essential: you must have a good antivirus (especially in the case of Windows),
enabled the firewall and have updated software versions (especially customers
of e-mail and instant messaging) and browser. Regarding antivirus is not
only necessary to keep it in the latest version but update the database of
known viruses.
Keep updated also the operating system and applications on your
Smartphone.
May Always close the session? If you've
used Twitter, or any application, into a public computer (library, etc..) Is
desirable that always locks the session to end and delete the browser history,
cache and cookies. To leave the session on Twitter, click "Log"
drop-down menu corresponding to the sprocket.
If you use a Smartphone, make use of the password lock function
to impede access to potential thieves.
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