Get Social Media Savvy with @CyFairJoel: Don't get hacked

I recently received an @ mention from a mutual follower that immediately looked off. It directed me to a site with a weird link where I could get great deals on designer merchandise.


This is the first step to avoiding getting hacked in Twitter: ask yourself if something passes the smell test. Would this person really send me something like this? Chances are, they wouldn’t. Turns out that whichever spambot had compromised this user’s account was sending out tweet-a-second mentions to every one of their followers with the same suspect content.


If you get hacked, you may not even be the first person to realize it. It may be your followers. So if you’re following someone and see something like this happening with their timeline, get in touch with them as soon as possible and have them change their password and delete all those tweets before the spiral of spam affects too many others.

Here’s a helpful article with more information on how to get out of a jam if your account becomes compromised.


But how do you avoid it in the first place? For one, you need to be judicious with anything you click on or enter your login information for. As a general rule, you should never enter your login information into a source that is not Twitter itself or connected to Twitter. Sometimes an email or @ mention will look legitimate, but really take a second glance at who is sending it. Inspect the sender’s email address and domain as well as the body text. If it’s an offer that looks too good to be true, it probably is.

Here is an article from CNN Tech on the top 5 social media scans to avoid. It’s about nine months old but many of the avenues that scammers use are still dressed similarly to these. This blog post from Twitter co-founder Biz Stone also addresses phishing scams on Twitter, and recommends a helpful account to follow in @Safety.


Have any more tips you think would be helpful? Hit me up!


~ @CyFairJoel