How to Protect Your Twitter Account From Hackers

Twitter has been a hotspot lately for user abuse and harassment, hate speech, spam, and yes, malware. One of the most frequent ways to spread viruses via Twitter is through a direct message that contains a link. That’s why it’s important to stay up to date on the latest malware, and have an antivirus app installed on your device. But that’s not the only step that you should take in order to make your Twitter account more secure. The following are some other ways that you can ensure hackers or malicious individuals will not take over your Twitter account.

Create App Passwords

One of the best ways to protect your data and personal information is to lock your device and apps. Make sure that you create passwords for all of your social networking apps, like Twitter and Facebook. You can also create passwords for your text messages, photos, and contacts, too, thereby making everything on your device private. It’s really up to you: you can protect any apps with a password that you want to be private and secure. This will help to protect your apps and data — and make sure that no one other than you can access your accounts — in the event that your phone is ever lost or stolen. Click here to create app passwords now:

The first step to a more secure Twitter account is to make sure that you update Twitter, other apps, and your phone whenever new updates are available. These updates often include necessary software updates, bug fixes, and security patches that will help to strengthen your device.

If you use your Twitter account on multiple devices, be sure to scan each device regularly for malware. This, in addition to updating your devices whenever updates become available, will help to ensure that your device is protected: hackers will not be able to exploit any vulnerabilities in outdated software.

Another precaution to take, for Twitter and beyond, is to always create strong, unique passwords for all of your accounts. Don’t reuse passwords — old or new — across a variety of accounts. Also, change your passwords regularly — about once or twice a year should be sufficient. If you want to make your account even more secure, consider using two-step verification. This step further verifies that you are who you say you are.

Lastly, make sure to avoid suspicious-looking links, and be wary of giving third-party applications access to your account. These are both highly common ways for hackers to take over your account.