Simple Tips to Protect Passwords of Your Social Networking Accounts

You may be familiar with a word “password leaks” as it is trending in the cyber security news from the recent times. News on the hacking of various accounts in the Facebook, Team viewer, Twitter, LinkedIn is swirling virally in the social media. Millions of Facebook and Twitter accounts were hacked in the past few days. Even Mark Zuckerberg account was hacked.




These password leaks happen all the time. One of your accounts may also get hacked one or the other day. Here are some useful tips that are to be followed by every user to ensure their safety. Initially, you need to know, how your password gets leaked?

How Do Password Leaks Happen?

Hackers find a way in, grab the database that contains hashed passwords, and then sell them off.
Information may also be leaked from an inside source i.e in the case of the Ashley Madison data leak. Disgruntled employees have a reputation for causing various types of havoc, and data leaks are among their tactics.

Irrespective of the source through which data obtained, it’s then either sold on the dark web or posted publicly on a site like Pastebin.
Following are the things you need to to do for your account security:

#1. Stay Informed

You can save your account when you have the information about your account all the time. You need yourself to be updated in the aspect of cyber security news. So that you can know what`s going on. Regularly, you need to check the sites like  LeakedSource.com blog or following Twitter accounts like@passwordsleaks or @PastebinLeaks, when there’s been a big leak. You may also follow tech on Google News.




 You can also set up a Google Alert for “password leak” and get notifications when there’s a new one in the news. For better ensuring, go to haveibeenpwned.com and enter your email address to check whether your account is listed in it or not.

#2. Change Potentially Leaked Passwords

Immediately change your password when you get a doubt that your password was leaked. In fact, you should probably just change your passwords on a regular basis anyway. You will get notifications whenever your password gets old. It is also better to save a reminder in the Google calendar. You may also use password manager for better remembering.

#3. Enable Two-Factor Authentication on Important Accounts

Using two-factor authentication (2FA) on as many accounts as possible is a great way to stay safe from password leaks. Though a person who knows your password also cannot access your account as you get an authentication code in the form of a message to your mobile. This adds additional security to your account.

#4. Don’t Duplicate Passwords

Don’t use the same password for all your accounts. If you use the same password for all accounts, then there might be a risk of hacking of all your accounts when a single account of yours gets hacked. You need to set a strong password for every site.
LastPass’s Security Challenge will even tell you how secure your collection of passwords is by looking at the strength of each password, potentially compromised sites, old passwords, and the number of duplicates that you have in your database, which will help you identify, and get rid, of ones you’ve used multiple times.











Find out if your accounts have been compromised, change the passwords, set up two-factor authentication, and start changing your other passwords on a regular basis. It feels like a lot of work, but the consequences for not doing it are much worse.