Twitter’s dos and don'ts to keep your account from getting hacked

• Verified accounts on Twitter were recently hacked as a part of a bitcoin-giveaway scam.
  
• The company is currently investigating the incident and frozen activity on the affected accounts.
  
• Here are the best practices you should follow in order to keep your Twitter account secure and safe from being hacked.
  

On Thursday, verified accounts on Twitter — including those of Elon Musk, Apple, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates and others — were hacked as a part of a bitcoin-giveaway scam. “We are investigating and taking steps to fix it. We will update everyone shortly,” said the social networking platform in a statement.


Meanwhile, many users are worried about their own account safety. Twitter has a list of dos and donts for users to in order to make sure that their account isn’t compromised, the first and foremost of which is setting a strong password.

Dos for setting a strong password on Twitter:

• Do create a password at least 10 characters long. Longer is better.
  
• Do use a mix of uppercase, lowercase, numbers, and symbols.
  
• Do use a different password for each website you visit.
  
• Do keep your password in a safe place. Consider using password management software to store all of your login information securely.
  

Donts for setting a strong password on Twitter:

• Do not use personal information in your password such as phone numbers, birthdays, etc.
  
• Do not use common dictionary words such as “password”, “iloveyou”, etc.
  
• Do not use sequences such as ”abcd1234”, or keyboard sequences like “qwerty”.
  
• Do not reuse passwords across websites. Your Twitter account password should be unique to Twitter.
  

In addition to setting a strong password, Twitter also recommends the following best practices:

• Use login verification with one-time-password for an added layer of security.
  
• Require email and phone number to request a reset password link or code.
  
• Be cautious of suspicious links and always make sure you’re on twitter.com before you enter your login information.
  
• Never give your username and password out to third parties, especially those promising to get followers, make you money, or verify you.
  
• Make sure your computer software, including your browser, is up-to-date with the most recent upgrades and anti-virus software.
  

Whenever you’re logging into Twitter be sure to cross-check the URL and ensure that it’s twitter.com or twitter.com/login. Any variation of the two may be a phishing scam to try and steal your login in details.

Twitter has also clarified that it will never reach out to you for your passwords — neither over, direct messages or reply. Nor will they ask users to download, open an attachment, or install software from an email that looks to be from the social networking behemoth.

You should also ensure that security measures and virus updates on your personal device at up to date. In choosing third party applications, make sure to review them before giving them access to your accounts.

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