Oh, that dreaded feeling when you see your Twitter account has posted something about diet pills or finding new love or sending out spammy DM’s.
First, and most importantly, change your password. If your password has been changed and you don’t know it, you can request a reset from Twitter here. Make sure you use a strong password (The Microsoft website has some really useful guidelines about how to create a strong password) and consider using something like 1password to store your passwords so you can use unique ones for each service. Consider using login verification – you can read up about how to do that on the Twitter website.
Make sure your email account is secure as well. If you’re a Gmail user, consider enabling 2-step Verification. Sure, it’s a bit of a faff, but your email is full of useful information and you don’t want that in the wrong hands!
Revoke access to your Twitter account for any applications that you haven’t used in a while. Yesterday, there was a lot of tweets being sent from an application which could tell you who your #tweetheart was. Most people will allow apps like this access to their account, then forget about it – but if the app is compromised, then (depending on what access they have to your account), they could be sending out anything!
So now you’ve locked down your account, time to delete all of the spam tweets and DM’s (if possible in your Twitter app – this will delete them from the other persons inbox). If you did send any DM’s, might be worth sending another one apologising and asking them not to click any links. You can also tweet that, of course!
This should cover most situations where accounts are compromised, but if you have any tips, let us know!
I’ve been hacked twice on Twitter, despite a strong password. I changed two things that made my account a lot more secure and haven’t been compromised since. The first was 2 step verification, where to use your twitter account on anything other than your phone you get a code sent to your phone every time. The second was to check your apps in your twitter settings, and make sure you revoke access to anything unusual.