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28 September 2011

Twitter account hacked: protecting your online reputation

 By Rachel Hawkes

Ever the fans of a decent infographic, we stumbled across this one called ‘Twacked – When good Twitter accounts go bad,’ by NowSourcing.

Twacked examines the most common reasons a Twitter account gets hacked, such as insecure passwords and third party applications.  There are more than 400 passwords banned on Twitter, and this is the part of the infographic I found most interesting - that people actually used passwords including ‘password’, ‘cookie’ ‘123456’ and ‘twitter.’  I mean… come on?!  Sorry, but if you choose passwords like that, then fair play to the hackers.

It also highlights some of the most infamous hacking ‘scandals’ from celebrities and media outlets.  

For me, the worst is the hacking of the @NBCNews account, where just a few days before the tenth anniversary of 9/11 a hacker sent out messages to say ground zero was under attack.  Naturally, this caused widespread and unnecessary panic and distress to not just the followers of @NBCNews, but to their followers, and their followers followers and so on.

Protecting your brand reputation online is not a small topic by any means, and this infographic doesn’t really touch the surface of that… but it does start a discussion and highlights a few basics that should be covered.  Not just on Twitter.

Top tips to protecting your reputation online – make your profile secure

1. Choose a secure password (!) – include numbers and letters and make the passwords different for each site you use
2. Regularly check back to see third party apps that you’ve authorised and unauthorise those that you don’t use anymore
3. Set up free alerts to be notified when your brand, product name etc. is mentioned somewhere on the web (personally, I recommend Google Alerts)
4. Register your brand usernames for the main web and social channels to prevent anyone else from doing it (NameChk and KnowEm are just two of many sites where you can check multiple sites to see if your username is available)
5. Stay proactive and act fast

Enjoy the infographic.

Twacked – When good Twitter accounts go bad infographic by NowSourcing

Categories: Social media, Marketing, Infographics

Tags: infographic, Twitter, online reputation, reputation online, hacked, security