Identity theft through social networking is on the rise. Hacked accounts may be used to impersonate you and potentially cause reputational harm, or may even link the hacker to your financial account information and passwords. But did you know that you can enable two-factor authentication to better protect your social media accounts from hacking and identity theft? Facebook, Twitter and other social media networks offer an additional security option that requires you to provide not only your password, but also a unique code sent to your mobile phone each time you log into the site. You can opt in by updating your security settings to enable “login verification” (Twitter) or “login approvals” (Facebook). To find a list of other social media networks that support two-factor authentication and more details on how to enable the security feature for each, you can check out twofactorauth.org.
Check out our series, Privacy Perils, to learn what steps you can take to guard your personal and company data. For more information about this topic and other cyber security concerns, please contact a member of our Privacy & Data Security team.