How to Protect Your Online Accounts from Getting Hacked

Katy Perry officially became the most followed person on Twitter recently, reaching an astounding 90 million followers. But even the world’s most popular Twitter account isn’t safe from hackers, as the singer found out a few months ago.

 Katy Perry’s Twitter account was hacked, sending out racist and homophobic slurs to her millions of followers online. Although this isn’t the first time a celebrity’s account has been hacked — Mark Zuckerberg’s social media accounts were hacked earlier this summer because of his terrible password — it does prove that it can happen to anyone, and can serve as a reminder to everyone to keep their online accounts secure. We’ve detailed four things you can do to help protect your online accounts and privacy from preying eyes.

Use multiple primary email addresses

Not only will doing this help to cut down on the amount of spam you receive in your personal email, but it can also help to keep your information and identity private. If you use the same email address for social media as you do for handling your health insurance, for example, then one of the services leaks your email address and password, you can be at risk of a mass account takeover, especially if you have the same password for all these accounts. The same thing applies to employers, medical institutions and other aspects of your life. That’s why it’s a good idea to keep separate email accounts for different things, such as one for social media, one for work-related content and one for personal communication. It should be noted that this same theory applies to your username. In fact, it has more impact on your identity than you think. Check out our guide to your username and privacy to learn more.

Don’t link your online accounts to your social media

When you first download a new mobile app that requires you to create an account or sign up for a new service, you’re usually given the option to link the service to your Facebook, Twitter or other social media account. While this may be an easy way to sign up for something since you don’t have to go through the full sign up or registration process, connecting all of your online accounts to one social media account can put you at risk. The logic is rather simple, if your social media account ever gets hacked, the hacker will be able to have access to any and every account linked to the one that was initially hacked. This concept applies to email addresses as well. Google, for example, gives you the option to sync all of your Gmail accounts, however, if a hacker is able to access only one of the accounts, they’ll also gain access to all to the other email accounts as well. Although using a social media or email service to create an online account for another service may be easy, you’re essentially putting your identity and privacy at risk for the sake of convenience. As such, the safest thing you can do to protect yourself is to create separate logins with different passwords for each of your online accounts. It may take you a little longer to sign up for new services, but the added security is worth the extra minute or two.

Avoid using identifying information in your password security questions

While creating a strong, unique password for all of your accounts is vital in this day and age, and something we’ve talked about quite a bit, creating hard-to-guess answers for your password security questions is equally as important. Identifying questions like, “What is your mother’s maiden name?” and “In which city were you born?” are used for password security and password resets in the event that you forget your password to login. But much of this is public information, which means if a hacker really wanted to get into your account or reset your password, all it would take is a quick web search to find this information and answer your security questions. Instead of using something that’s on public records or plastered on your Facebook page, like your niece’s name, opt for the more general questions about your favorite color, best friend or first pet’s name. If you’re forced to select a question about your identity (a lot of sites don’t have much variety), use a made up city or name to help safeguard your accounts and your identity.

Enable two-factor authentication

Another thing we’ve discussed many times before, two-factor authentication is one of the keys to protecting your online accounts. That’s because when this technology is enabled, it will alert you whenever you (or someone else) logs into your account. Here’s how it works: you enter your username and password into your online account, then you’re required to enter a one-time code, which is emailed or texted to you, to complete the login process. Because it alerts you every time you log into your account on a new device, you can easily recognize if someone other than you logs into your account because you’ll receive an alert with a one-time code. Although not all online services offer this form of protection, it is available to a large majority, as detailed by the website www.twofactorauth.org.

Looking for more ways to stay secure on the Internet? Follow our privacy blog to learn more about protecting your accounts and your identity online.