Hackers took advantage of a Twitter flaw Tuesday morning, sending Twitter security into action to stop the cyber criminals. Take this opportunity to increase your own computer security and avoid a hack on your personal accounts.
Twitter security was breached Tuesday morning, sending celebrities like Justin Bieber and Kim Kardashian into panic thinking their quips wouldn’t reach their legions of fans.
Just kidding. Well, about the celebrity part.
Hackers did gain access to a hole in Twitter’s security for a few minutes, causing pop-ups to appear when users hovered their cursors over a malicious link. The virus only affected users of Twitter.com and the hackers were thwarted by mid-morning.
Luckily the Twitter hack didn’t cause too many problems, but some computer users aren’t so lucky. Ask anyone who’s been the victim of a virus or email hack — it can be a headache to clean up.
Situations like this are a good reminder to beef up our own web security. Follow a few of these steps to decrease your chances of an attack:
- Never click on questionable links, even from friends — a common way hackers spread viruses is by gaining access to email accounts and emailing malicious links to a user’s address book.
- Keep your passwords private and change them often — good passwords contain both numbers and upper and lower case letters, along with special characters. Make sure they’re easy to remember, though!
- Update your computer’s anti-virus software — good anti-virus programs are constantly updated with new virus-proofing code and can catch a virus before it attacks your computer.
Internet security tips change all the time. Keep up to date with the latest web security tips from Microsoft and Google.
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