Follow These Steps To Keep Your Instagram Safe From Hackers
Christ on a bike… I don’t know about you but quite a few business friends in my circles have had their social media accounts hacked, recently! And it was the wakeup call I needed to get my butt in gear and make sure I was protected from the same thing happening to me. Here’s what I’ve learned from my unfortunate friends experiences:
ANTIVIRUS ON PHONE AND COMPUTER
Did you know you CAN in fact put antivirus software on your phone - not just your computer?! I didn’t but now I do! I just use Norton Antivirus for my laptop and it costs roughly $85 AUD for the year and I can use it on up to five devices. You send myself a ‘link’ to whichever device you like (iPhone, iPad etc) and then download the protection there too. I’ve now made sure my laptop has protection installed and my iPhone does too.
A note on this: your computer and iPhone actually has ‘inbuilt’ virus protection in the software however, read on to learn why this doesn’t always protect you
UPDATES
Hand to heart, I had no idea that my accounts were open and vulnerable to hackers if I did not keep my phone and laptop up-to-date with the latest software updates. I mean, makes sense when you think about it but no-one had actually told me this until recently. Regularly updating your software updates is a small inconvenience compared with being hacked is it not? Here’s our incentive to click ‘update’ when our phone next pings us with with that annoying little notification.
Keep your devices updated and you’ll have increased protection from virus and hackers!
TWO-FACTOR AUTHENTIFICATION
You might have heard of this already - it’s a setting within your Facebook and instagram account which allows you EXTRA protection from hackers. You want to make sure that you toggle this to be ON and select a secondary way you can verify ownership of your account other than just your account password. For example, I will now also get a text message to my phone with a code to put in if there is any suspicious activity on my account. IF someone is impersonating you and attempting to hack your account then this makes it much harder for them, not only will they need to know or hack your password but they’ll need to somehow have access to your mobile phone to receive the code to then type in and take over your account. This is why its so important to turn two-factor authentication ON.
For instructions on how to do this, click here
PASSWORD SHOULD BE COMPLICATED
This probably doesn’t need to be expanded on any further - you know what I mean you clever bitch! Just make your password complicated - throw some numbers, capitalisation and exclamation marks in there and then write it down somewhere handy until you memorise it
DON’T ALLOW THIRD PARTY APPS
Third-party access isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but you need to keep an eye on which apps are connected to your Instagram account. I personally don’t allow them access just to be super safe. To check if any third-party apps have access to your Instagram, go to your Instagram Settings, then Security, then Apps and Websites. Have a read about this further, over here.
Hope that was helpful! Reach out if you need clarification on anything - I’m no expert on the matter but I’ll share whatever I do know
Much love,
Rebecca