Hello, I’m Lucy from Harrogate Mama . A blog that shares what’s great about Harrogate for families and grown-ups. My 6,000+ followers Instagram account was hacked last week; I was blackmailed over it and I thought it was lost. Most likely forever. But fortunately, through some luck, timing and help from the Harrogate community I managed to get it back
If you have a social media account, you’ll want to make sure you keep it safe. You, probably, like me you use your social media as a highlights photo album, memory maker and to keep in touch with friends and family. If you use social media for your business, you’ll want to take even more care of it; it’s your business contacts, client base, working relationships, business correspondence, revenue stream and your reputation.
Here are five ways to help protect your social media accounts so you don’t fall foul of the keyboard cowboys.
1 – Passwords
Seems an obvious thing, but worth a re-cap. Don’t have the same password for any two things. Make sure your passwords are unique and unusual. Keep your passwords safe in an App, such as Apple Passwords and keep them up to date. Change them regularly. If you have an App to do this, you won’t need to remember them all the time, so long as you keep them up to date.
2 – Cover your bases
If you use Instagram for your business, it’s a good idea to also have a Facebook page, a Twitter feed and your own webspace if you can. That way, all is not lost if you do fall victim. Remember; you don’t own your social media, Meta does – so it’s always good to have a back-up. Not only can you be hacked, but Meta can also take it away from you. If you’re a business think about spending some time on your mailing list, which will be something you do own.
3 – Two Factor Authentication
This is the MOST IMPORTANT one. I thought I had this set up on my account. I didn’t – if I’d had this my account wouldn’t have been vulnerable.
Meta (the parent company of Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp) say that they give us all the security tools required to look after our accounts. They’re clear that if you choose not to use them you leave yourself vulnerable. However, I have a degree and a background in social media and even I found the Two Factor Authentication difficult to set up on my Instagram account. They don’t make it easy.
If you value your account, my advice would be to stop whatever you’re doing now and set this up. Details on how to do this are on Instagram’s Helpdesk
4 – Be Vigilant
The people targeting accounts are experienced, skilled, clever, and crafty. I was caught in a phishing scam (despite my mother-in-law telling me of a similar experience only days before!). Phishing is someone pretending to be someone they’re not to catch you out online. The account that phished me was pretending to be Meta. I was distracted and in haste I replied to them and gave away information I never thought I would. So, I would urge you to take a breath before hitting that reply button. Check who the message is from, check their following, check their photos. If it doesn’t feel right, it’s not right! Block them and report them.
5- Back up your data
If you want a copy of everything you’ve shared on Instagram, you can request a download of your data in a machine-readable HTML or JSON format. You’ll need your Instagram account password to request this information. You can find more information on how to do that at the Instagram helpdesk.
There’s some more details from North Yorkshire Police attached. And you can find more online at the Cyberaware website.
More You can read more about what happened to me on my blog post there is a follow up blog post coming soon which will share how I managed to get my account back.
CyberAware_Brochure_v3_ONLINE READ
Guest Blog By Harrogate Mama
