On Saturday 15th of October direct messages were sent out from unsuspecting accounts due to a Twitter hacking virus. We took these steps to protect our accounts.
Trusted sources
Last night we received Direct Messages on Twitter from a trusted source to both the BCM_Tweets account and my personal EstherBCM account. These tweets said:
‘Bad blog going around about you, have you read it yet? link**’
**I have not put the link in as I don’t want to pass it on!
As any conscientious business owner would, albeit slightly off guard- it was Saturday night- I checked the link. It took me through to a twitter page saying that there was an issue and I couldn’t log in.
That was when the virus started running through my account and tweeting all my followers. Apologies to all of you who received one or more messages from us but once it started I could not stop it nor get in to the account to sort it out.
How to secure your Twitter Account
This morning I have been able to access my accounts have followed these simple instructions from Twitter if you believe your account has been hacked:
- Go to your Settings under your profile tab
- Change your password: Make sure you use a secure password with letters, numbers and symbols such as ‘£$%@.:*’
- Check your applications: The last tab under settings lists the 3rd party applications that you have allowed to access your twitter account. Make sure that you know exactly what they all are and any that are new or look suspicious revoke their access to your account
- Update your apps/clients/mobiles with your new password: If you don’t update all the 3rd party applications, either on your computer, tablet, phone or online, with your new password you won’t be able to use your account with them. Even worse you might well be locked out of your account for trying to access it with the wrong details.
The full instructions given by Twitter can be found here.
If you follow these instructions then you should stem the virus.
Spread the word
If you think that you have been hacked then please contact your followers (best done by open tweets as your Direct Message allocation has probably been used up), warn them and share these instructions on how to protect their account.