You’ve worked hard on building your social media profiles. You selected appropriate people to follow, posted interesting snippets, pictures and links but have you protected your account? Have you done everything you can to prevent someone in a country halfway across the world from logging in and posting spam on your LinkedIn or Twitter timelines?
Thankfully you can reduce the chance of someone hacking into some of the most popular social media platforms by using two-factor authentication. It works on the principle of something you know (your password) and something you have (generally a code generated on a device you hold or sometimes a text message sent to your mobile phone). Many banks use similar systems either issuing tokens or PIN pads.
You can also tell most sites to trust computers e.g. your computer at home and once you’ve logged in once to the app on your mobile phone or tablet the process doesn’t change from what you are used to for subsequent logins.
LinkedIn
This page explains how to set it up on LinkedIn along with some slides to guide you through the process.
Twitter
Twitter explain the process here along with a short video.
One important thing to consider when setting up two-factor authentication is to ensure that you have a system of recovering your account if you lose the device that generates your code. Twitter refer to these as backup codes whilst other sites might call them recovery passwords or one-time passwords. These should be printed and stored somewhere safely.
The Two Factor Auth (2FA) website has collated a list of websites covering a range of areas including banking, email and finance that either have or have not made two factor authentication available on their services.
So protect your hard work in building your social media profile and protect your accounts with two-factor authentication today.
