Safeguarding Your Social Media Accounts

In some ways, it’s more challenging for businesses to secure their accounts than individuals. You don’t want to keep your posts and business information private as you obviously want to attract publicity. However, it’s still important to use caution and make sure you make it difficult for anyone to hack into your account or steal your information. Keep these guidelines in mind and make sure that all your employees use common sense and are well-trained in basic cyber security principles.

• Facebook — Check out Facebook’s extra security features such as setting up login approvals, which is an example of two-factor authentication where you need an additional step to log in. Turn on login alerts, so you know when someone logs into your Facebook account from a new device or location.

• Twitter — Go to privacy and safety settings. The most important settings here are “verify login requests” and “require personal information to reset my password.” Without these precautions, anyone can change your password. You may also want to disable “add a location.” Clicking on “protect my tweets” means only people who follow you see your tweets. As a business, of course, there are reasons to keep your tweets public.

• LinkedIn – On LinkedIn’s privacy settings, there are quite a few options, such as deciding who can see your updates and connections. Here it’s up to you to find the right balance between privacy and visibility. Turn on two-step verification to secure your account. Because LinkedIn is a B2B network, you should watch for hackers putting up fake company profiles or people falsely claiming to work for you. One way to reduce risks here is only to accept invitations to connect with people you know.