Thursday, January 19, 2012

Ashton Kutcher Fights Back After His Social Media Account Is Hacked…But Should You?


Ashton Kutcher’s Foursquare and Twitter accounts hacked.  Learn what not to do if this happens to you.

It would be tempting wouldn’t it?  If someone took over your social media accounts, tweeted embarassing posts and when you finally get your accounts back from them you threaten them on the very accounts they just hacked.   

We all have friends who get their accounts hacked, have to get their passwords reset, and hope that nobody clicks on the crazy links sent by the hackers.  This gets even crazier when big names, like Ashton Kutcher, have their accounts hacked into.  Ashton has roughly 9 million followers that are bound to click on the bad links.  But taking matters into your own hands and fighting back on your own account might sound like sweet revenge but Cyber Expert Theresa Payton thinks that’s not such a good idea...

THE BIZARRE POSTS:
The hackers posted tweets about a sleepover that Ashton had with his new girlfriend and included links to her house.  The problem is, it wasn’t Ashton, it was the hacker going through Ashton’s Foursquare account to Twitter.

Kutcher then posts to Twitter that he knows the account was hacked and that he knows their address!

Kutcher has since deleted the posts including one that said, “I’m coming for you my friend” and posts a location

TIPS:
1.  Don’t do this.  You will antagonize the hacker.  Remember, if you do check ins or tweets with location turned on, the hacker knows where you’ve been and can probably predict where you will be.
2.  Report it immediately to your social networking site.  Change every password you have and make them all different across your accounts.
3.  Send out a notice to all your followers, friends, and family that your account was recently taken over and to be wary of links on posts.  

WORD OF THE WEEK:
DOODLE:  This is cool little scheduling app.  There is a free service and a paid service.  Having a tough time scheduling that carpool?  Trying to get a lunch pulled together?  This allows you to send a targeted email, suggested times, and people pick and choose what works.  You get one view of what works best for everyone. No more emails back and forth.  Again, be careful how much you share.  Confidential meetings should be handled the old fashioned way - phone calls!



WEB RESOURCES:

Our word of the week, Doodle, can be found at:  http://doodle.com/

If your Twitter account is hacked, Twitter has helpful resources at:

http://support.twitter.com/articles/31796

For some pictures of the Tweets (you can’t find them on Twitter because they were deleted!) go to Graham Cluley’s webpage at Sophos:
http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2012/01/16/ashton-kutcher-foursquare-twitter-hack/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+nakedsecurity+(Naked+Security+-+Sophos)&utm_content=Google+Reader


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