Securing your social media accounts amid Twitter chaos

SALT LAKE CITY — With the recent mass exodus of employees from Twitter, there are heightened concerns about the safety of the platform, and cyber security experts say this is a good time to make sure your social media accounts are secure.

“The threat landscape at Twitter is heightening at the moment. The vulnerability of Twitter is heightening at the moment,” Earl Foote, CEO of Nexus IT, said. “And certainly, users of Twitter right now should be thinking about making sure — as they interact with the platform — that they’re using best practices to remain secure.”

Foote said it is likely there are fewer eyes monitoring and protecting Twitter these days. But he added that social media in general “is a hotbed of cyber-crime activity.”

Millions of accounts, he said, are hacked on Facebook every month.

“I think any time you’re interacting with a social media company on those apps, I think you need to be very careful,” Adam Marre, chief information security officer at Arctic Wolf and a former FBI agent, said. “I don’t think any of the things I would tell somebody have changed depending on what’s happening at [Twitter].”

Marre acknowledged the current situation at the company “does heighten the concern a little bit in the short term,” but he stressed that social media users across all platforms need to do better at protecting their privacy and personal information.

“It’s your responsibility online to be safe,” he said, adding that people need to educate themselves about it.

“The point is you should always be aware and cautious with a heightened sense of risk when dealing with social media platforms.”

Foote recommended a few specific things to secure your account, including:

• Stay away from DM’s or direct messaging sensitive information.
• Use a highly-rated password manager to get a secure password.
• Turn on multi-factor authentication to add another layer of security to access your account.
• And lock down your personal data in settings.

He also said you can request from Twitter what information they have on you and make sure you’re comfortable with what they have.

Marre said he believes we need legislation at the federal level to protect data to a higher degree.

“I don’t think people would be comfortable with that if they really knew how powerful this information can be,” Marre said. “Even if you don’t go on the application very much, if that app is on your phone, typically it’s collecting a lot of information about you.”