Has Your Social Network Status Been Jacked?

Learn How To Protect Your Identity

Everyone has experienced Facebook “hacking” of some sort. Most of the time it is relatively harmless, it is simply a friend or coworker taking advantage of a social networking site that has been inadvertently left up on the computer. Although usually no harm comes from these types of “hackings”, they can happen at very inconvenient times, and if done at the wrong time they can have a significant impact on your online reputation.

This type of hijacking is relatively simple to prevent. You just have to be a little bit more careful about how you protect your account and what you leave open on computers. Most social networking websites have a convenient option where they will remember you so that you don’t need to enter your password every time you use the computer. However if you do this on a public computer you may be opening yourself up to a world of hurt.  As a form of online reputation management, make sure that you don’t stay logged on to any public computers.

If you are finding that you have status updates that are not made by some of your friends, then you have a serious reason to worry. Change the passwords to your social networking websites and make sure that you are extremely careful about who you tell your passwords to (hint: it should be no one). Fix your privacy settings so that you can’t be found by just anybody on the internet.

You don’t need a social network to find random people. You only need to be adding people you know, and by hiding yourself from others you can prevent them from finding your profile and attempting to hack into it. An important part of reputation management is keeping your social networking accounts protected from unwanted intruders on the internet.