Social media hacks on the rise: How to protect your account
Katlego Sekhu
Most people have either been hacked on social media before or know someone who has fallen victim to hacking.
Back in February, Kaya 959’s Thabo ‘Tbose’ Mokwele unfortunately became a victim of a Facebook hack. Taking to social media, Tbose alerted his followers, saying, “Guys, my Facebook page has been hacked. Please report and block.”
More recently, the official X (formerly Twitter) accounts of the South African Parliament were hacked to promote a cryptocurrency token named after President Cyril Ramaphosa.
On Drive 959, Glen Lewis revealed that his TikTok account was also compromised. “The hacker opened a Ponzi scheme. I even had to make a post announcing that my TikTok account had been hacked,” he shared.
Knowing how to prevent such incidents and what to do if they occur can significantly improve your social media security.
My Broadband editor Jan Vermeulen spoke to Ayanda Nyathi to shed light on this issue. Vermeulen noted that part of the problem is that very few people enable two-step verification.
He explained, “Most people rely solely on the default SMS verification, which is susceptible to SIM card attacks. You need to choose a secure password and consider additional security measures.”
Vermeulen advised using a password manager such as 1Password. “It’s an app you can download that runs on your PC or smartphone. It stores all your passwords securely, and you only need to remember one strong master password,” he said.
He cautioned, “Just ensure that your master password for the password manager is strong. If you can remember one strong password, the password manager can generate random, secure passwords for everything else. This makes your accounts much more secure.”
Responding to Ayanda’s follow-up question about the security of password managers, Vermeulen emphasised, “These services are in the business of security, so they ensure it’s incredibly difficult to crack the passwords they store. They encrypt all your data, making it nearly impossible to decrypt without the master password.”
He added, “Something like a passkey can also be very helpful when managing passwords for various accounts.”
For the full discussion, listen to the podcast.
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