Twitter has become the latest victim of a targeted hacking attack after a large number of user accounts were compromised at the weekend. Bob Lord, Twitter’s Information Secretary, confirmed that passwords, usernames, email addresses and other information belonging to over 250,000 users had been stolen.
Once the problem was identified, Twitter invalidated the passwords of the affected accounts and emailed the users to inform them of the breach and provide a link which would allow them to reset their passwords. However, the problems may not end there for those who had their information stolen.
Many people use the same email address and password combinations across a multitude of different networks and services, meaning that the extent of the damage could be much more severe than just having someone gaining access to your private tweets. Not only is the idea of someone else being able to look through your content and post from your profile rather disturbing, but the thought that their finger could be hovering over the Delete key is also a worry.
Last year Mat Honan, a writer at Wired.com – was the victim of an ‘epic hacking‘ that saw someone gain access to his Google account, hijack his Twitter account and remotely erase everything on his iPhone, iPad and MacBook after breaking into his AppleID account. In his own words: “In the space of one hour, my entire digital life was destroyed”.
While SocialSafe cannot offer any additional layers of security for any of your online accounts, it can give you peace of mind over the thought of permanently losing data from your social networks. By using SocialSafe to back up your Facebook profile, Twitter account, Instagram photos, LinkedIn connections and much, much more, you create your library of you on your own PC or Mac. So no matter what may happen to your online accounts, by taking control of your data your yesterdays will be preserved tomorrow.