How to protect your accounts from hackers
A screenshot of the hacked tweet on April, 23, 2013.
For less than five minutes Tuesday, thousands with an eye on their Twitter accounts thought that the White House had been bombed and President Obama injured.
That's because the official Twitter handle of the Associated Press was hacked and tweeted, "Breaking: Two Explosions in the White House and Barack Obama is injured" at 1:07 p.m.
So how does such a large media company get hacked? In this case, the AP received a phishing e-mail a few hours before the hack. Phishing e-mails pretend to be from a trusted site and often encourage users to click a link, which can then allow the hackers to get personal information. And if the AP can be hacked, so can you.
The easiest way hackers can get into your Twitter or Facebook account is by simply guessing your password. That's why your password should be at least six characters long, include upper and lower case letters and at least one number. Preferably, it should not be a logical word or phrase and it certainly should not contain any of the words in your user name. Try to change your password once a month, and don't re-use old passwords.
However, hackers can also use the more sophisticated phishing method -- and this is harder to avoid. If you get an e-mail that encourages you to click on a link, first make sure that the e-mail is from a reputable source. If the e-mail says it's from Facebook but the sending address is from a Gmail, Hotmail or other free mail carrier site, it's probably spam.
Hackers can also get into your computer system when you download files sent in fake e-mails. Unless you are absolutely sure the file is safe, don't download it. Instead, try to open it in an online program like Google Viewer first. If the document says it's a Word document but won't open in a program like Google Viewer, it's probably just a fake download from spammers or hackers.
Another simple rule that college students often forget is to log off of accounts on public computers, and even your personal laptop, if you plan on leaving it in a crowded dorm room. Hacks by friends can be funny, but you can't always be sure the next person who logs on just wants to make a joke.
Caroline Todd, a junior at Rhodes College in Memphis, has experienced her fair share of this "friendly" hacking, and it can become annoying. Once, her friends logged into her Facebook account and friended every person they could find named Peter on Facebook. A year later she was still getting friend acceptances from random Peters on Facebook.
"They also changed my profile picture to Peter, liked every Peter kind of interest there was to like and changed my quotes to be all about Peter," said Todd.
Someone also once reset her Amazon account preferences so that her interests were only erotic novels and films.
Stories of these "funny" hacks are frequent, especially by friends on personal accounts, but hacking can become dangerous and even career-threatening if hackers get into professional accounts or find confidential information about you or your employer. It might be impossible to evade the danger of hacking entirely, but you can certainly make your accounts more hack-proof by following a few simple steps.
Susannah Griffee is a Spring 2013 Paste BN Collegiate Correspondent. Learn more about her here.
This story originally appeared on the Paste BN College blog, a news source produced for college students by student journalists. The blog closed in September of 2017.