Social Security: Change Your Password Now!

No matter how tight the securities in the real world, leaders are assassinated, banks are robbed and jails broken. Life online is as full of threats as the physical world and so, cause for fear is valid in the case of identity and password thefts. The vulnerability among users is aggravated more so when the breach occurs on a large scale, causing insecurity that affects other social media as well that spreads like a contagion. But putting the entire responsibility on social networks is unfair, though they do bear the greater part of it.

Everyone is affected in the process: The company’s reputation is damaged, the user faces threat and even the innocent third party stakeholders become victims of generalization. Because of this, users are being warned against downloading applications that extract personal information without user permission. This is one of the reasons why Facebook developers are finding it increasingly challenging to market their applications.

What worsens the situation are the counter measures, or lack thereof, in the face of threat by social media companies. LinkedIn is now infamous for not having acted in a timely manner after learning that user passwords were being stolen. Their second mistake was their attempt at covering the incident. They will have to now double their efforts at regaining the trust of over 6.4 million users whose passwords were stolen.

Users are obviously wary, but whether they are paying closer attention to site policies and agreements, and most of all the security tips that were once ignored entirely, is still uncertain. Social sites and email administration advise users to change their password frequently. But the tendency to be laid back until trouble arises comes naturally to most, and isn’t constantly changing passwords a hassle? Perhaps now users will pay more heed.

Huffington Post recommends, just as you possess a different key for all your locks, so you should keep a different password for each site. The recent mishap with password theft on LinkedIn could happen on Facebook as well, so Facebook is already preparing to protect their 900 million users in case they fall victim to a similar scenario. Users will soon be asked to confirm their passwords through their mobile phones. This way, should Facebook accounts be hacked, and then the social medium will be able to wipe out user passwords and send new ones to users directly through SMS. In addition, with their mobile strategy in full swing, Facebook has introduced an account recovery authentication tool for mobile Facebook users as well as a ‘Code generator’ on Android apps. Sounds effective, and hopefully enough to keep out the evil hackers.

Salman Ghaznavi Originally Found this on Avenuesocial

Salman Ghaznavi is the founder of Avenuesocial Inc. a company focused on social media marketing and tool design & development. Avenuesocial is one of the premium Facebook App Consultants, and My role is to actively pursue a global strategy, create and help roll-out Avenuesocial social tool, the AS Pathways. The AS Pathways tool offers social media marketing and analytics with integrated campaign management (on Facebook and Twitter), multi-channel execution, engagement reports and user management.