My Personal Hacking Experience

Although having your social media account hacked (happened to be Twitter for me) is not as devastating as  having your bank account compromised, it teaches a lesson that we should all heed.

When I originally set up my personal Twitter account in 2007, I was “trying it out” and really didn’t take it too seriously. That was the year that Twitter hit a million users. Since then , Twitter has exploded to 500 million users.

I set up my Twitter account with an easy password that I could remember. Five years later, that password has been compromised. I don’t use it much anymore and never used it on anything that I was really concerned about. Since I link a lot of social media together , the “nice” person from Brazil who hacked me also tried to get into my Facebook and some other stuff. I had changed those passwords to stronger ones mostly (I am ashamed to say) at the request of the services themselves. I hadn’t gotten around to Twitter yet (or rather they hadn't gotten around to me yet)

So far the damage has been minimal.Up until yesterday, I had the pleasure of following 2000+ random people from Brazil (Sao Paulo to be precise) who mostly Tweet in Spanish and Portuguese about rap music. Being the big fan of rap music that I am and being so fluent in Portuguese……I  set out to unfollow these folks. Easier said than done but I managed to find something called Manage Flitter http://manageflitter.com that allows you to mass unfollow people. Great stuff! The Twitter shores are once again safe…..and Brazilian free. Manage Flitter has several built in filters that you can use, one is the “People Who Tweet in A Different Language” filter. Kind of makes me think that this has happened to someone else????

As annoying as this was, no real damage was done. Even if this person had done what I have heard has been done to others, and discussed my “well known” crack addiction or my sexual preferences (or lack of) publicly as me…(every one who “really” knows me is well aware of both those items)…it would still just be annoying. Going through the list of my “new best friends” was sort of entertaining. Along with the rappers and party people were several transsexuals and one real interesting account which is a resource for doctors who need information on the latest techniques for transgender surgery. I am still trying to decide if this was something designed to make me look bad or simply a reflection of my hackers personal tastes.

Who is to blame for my hacking experience? ME! I am a technology and social media consultant..I do this stuff for a living and I am supposed to know better. I screwed up…..Twitter isn’t to blame. Now my Brazilian hacker has some culpability obviously (God love him) but the responsibility for securing my accounts rests squarely on my pointy head. ARE YOU SECURE???? Unless you want to acquire a few thousand “new best friends” or are shopping for some transgender surgery…you had better take a hard look at the passwords and security settings of all your web based accounts. NOW!!