What To Do If Your Twitter or Facebook Account is Hacked or Phished

Tip of the Week- What to do if your Twitter or Facebook Account is Phished or Hacked- Yikes, my Twitter account was phished and a good friend's Facebook account was hacked!

As much as Karl and I trumpet the benefits of using Social Media and Networking, sometimes things happen which can lead to a bad experience. In general, screen your messages and tweets carefully. If the message contains spelling or grammatical errors that could be a tip-off that the message (and link contained in it are bogus...and potentially harmful). Of course, never supply your username, password, or personal/sensitive information to websites which seem suspicious in any way.

And even though you know an individual, if their account has been taken over, then you could be receiving a message/link from a spammer or hacker and not your trusted friend. One friend of ours emails people sending him links (who he knows) to ask and assure they are legitimate links (or not)...before clicking on them. Very prudent policy!

What does phishing/hacking mean?

"Phishing" is when someone attempts to acquire sensitive information from you "such as usernames, passwords and credit card details by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication" (according to Wikipedia): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phishing.

"Hacking" is "To use one's skill in computer programming to gain illegal or unauthorized access to a file or network (according to The Free Dictionary): http://www.thefreedictionary.com/hacking

How did this happen?

In my case I clicked on a shortened link in a direct message (DM) in Twitter from a trusted friend. The message suggested that she'd found me online and had a link. Unfortunately I clicked on the link and my browser went to a red screen with security warnings about the content on the site.

After this I was sick with a cold and wasn't watching Twitter that closely and didn't realize that a variety of direct messages with various links were being sent out to some of my Twitter followers. People direct messaged me and emailed me about it and I finally woke up from the stupor of my cold and took action to get my Twitter account back. Unfortunately by that time my ability to send direct messages had been shut off.

Twitter: What to do if your Twitter account is phished/hacked

First, go to Twitter's link on how to solve this: http://help.twitter.com/forums/10713/entries/31796.

In a nutshell, what you need to do is log out of Twitter, clear your browser's cache*, open a new browser window, reset your password, and check your Connections (to see what 3rd party applications are accessing your Twitter account).

* Internet Explorer: Tools > Internet Options, and then click on the "Delete" button under Browsing History. Check all of the boxes (except InPrivate Filtering data) and click on the "Delete" button.
* Firefox: Tools > Clear Recent History, and then click on the down-arrow next to "Details", check all of the boxes, and select "Everything" for the time range to clear.

Then I had to submit a support request to Twitter using the link in the page mentioned above to let them know that I'd taken all of the correct steps and request that my direct messaging be turned on again.

Shortly after this Twitter sent me an email message, I checked my direct messaging, and all was fine with my account again. Yea!

Facebook: What to do if your Facebook account is phished/hacked

First, go to this link on Facebook on how to solve this: http://www.facebook.com/help/search.php?hq=hack&ref=hq.

In a nutshell, if you can still access your login email address, then use the "Forgot your password" link to prompt an email from Facebook with a "reset code". If you can't access your account, then use the link above.

Note 1: To be on the safe side, I'd still recommend clearing your browser cache as mentioned above under "Twitter" (before going through the password reset process).

Note 2: Your account could also have been phished/hacked by a phishing website, worm, or malicious software. So please be sure to see the "Warnings" section on the web page/link above.

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Bonus Tip: How to See Where Shortened Links are Linking to

For Bit.ly: A Firefox Add-on allows you to hover over bit.ly links on any web page and see a "Preview" of the page title and long URL: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/10297. This Add-on claims to work for TinyURL as well.
- Side benefits of this add-on are that you can also see the number of clicks for the shortened links as well as bios/profiles for peoples' TwitterNames you hover over (including @names, e.g., @rickhenkin or @karlkasca)!

For TinyURL: You can preview where a TinyURL.com URL leads either by adding "preview" in your short link or on your computer:

http://preview.tinyurl.com/5s6o8n - In your short link (example).
http://tinyurl.com/preview.php - On your computer (Enable previews).

Note: Bit.ly and TinyURL represented about 90% of the link shortening market as of May, 2009 according to TechCrunch.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/05/07/when-it-comes-to-url-shorteners-bitly-is-now-the-biggest/

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For Is.gd: How to preview an is.gd shortened address

http://is.gd/instructions.php

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What about Blue Hyperlinks on web pages?

As always, if you want to "look before you leap" before clicking on hyperlinked text on web pages, you can simply hover over the link and preview the full web address at the bottom of your browser screen.