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Do you use Facebook? How about Twitter?

Here are some guidelines about safe use of these conduits to your information. Social networking seems to be everywhere these days. People happily post pictures of their children, their grandparents, their friends drinking parties, trusting those who view them to enjoy them “privately”.

A recent case of a woman who’s password was hacked and her account cracked, meant she had to shut her Facebook account down as the hackers then harvested pity from her close friends and actually extracted $1000 via Western Union from one of them within 24 hours. She found the “report” link on Facebook and after 12 hours, Facebook closed her hacked account. Apart from faults we hope Facebook will fix (especially the show response time), where did she go wrong?

The first line of defense is your password. Quite often it is your only line of defense.

Password guidelines

Computer programmes that guess passwords try out many variations on common words and combinations with various numbers. Random letter sequences are far more obscure. But people forget their passwords and use rubbish passwords.

Make sure it is not “password” for example. Make sure that it is not your login name, your date of birth or any actual word in English. Use MiXeD Case and numbers and even symbols (#$%) in your password. I know everyone says “remember your password and do not write it down” but that is just silly. It is better to write it in a notebook you keep in a very safe place, than it ever will be keeping passwords on your iPhone or in some digital place. If your book gets stolen – then you are in real trouble. But if your laptop with all your internet banking gets stolen, you are in a far worse position. The amount of stuff you have stored on it over the years could come back to haunt you. Worse, the thieves are likely to just delete the lot.

There has to be a better way. Online password safes (repositories) are asking you to trust them to never make a mistake. There has to be a better way. There is.
But in this instance, it was one person vs unknown criminals and all she had to go on was being unable to login to Facebook, and probably a phone call from a friend.

Common sense dictates:

1. do not respond financially to requests on Facebook or other social media.
2. be suspicious of any links in any email. For example I just received this:

Quoted email: The target link address has been changed to an invalid one.
===========================================================
Hi,

(Ed. NB: Have changed the fast link URL, so it does not go anywhere)

=====================================================

If you receive an email like the above, it sounds innocent enough, but click that fast link and you do not know where you will end up. It may install software on your browser that reports your keystrokes. If you have clicked on such a link in an email, you should consider all your passwords broken.

Now what can you do?

Read Emergency guide to password changing.

The cost of the social networking business model is: distraction.

The business model has been adopted universally due to it being successful. But it is not the only path to success. Back in the day, businesses paid people for their work. We everyone is empowered we now seem so keen to promote and give away our works on a social network as it is the culture of social networking.

It is a bit of a case of the Emperor’s new clothes.