How can you be a social media expert - and still get hacked so many times?

Story by @seomommasays

It’s a question that’s been intriguing me for some time. Not that someone actually gets hacked, after all, if governments get hacked, someone’s Facebook or Twitter can get hacked.

No, for me, it comes down to how often they get hacked and what constitutes getting hacked. To clarify what I perceive these this to mean, here is my definition.

Hacked - Someone has found a way into my account using a ‘keylogger’ on my computer, from an attack via web connectivity or other form of access. Or, software weaknesses on the actual social media platforms I use to discover my login details.

This definition may not be yours but as I’m the one writing this we must go with mine.

We’ll start with a fairy tale, that of a woman who purports to be your social media fairy godmother. All you have to do is follow her and fabulous things will happen. You’ll learn amazing spells you can use to turn yourself into a social media fairy godmother and have zillions of followers.

Remember though, once you have all those followers you’ll still need to follow your fairy godmother because she’s always one step ahead and you need to keep up. You’re also told that once you have all these followers you too can acquire many golden coins so you can buy a fairy palace to live in and improve the power and quality of your fairy wand.

So dazzled are you that you compliantly follow along, little realising that your fairy tale can turn very dark.

One day, your fairy godmother offers you a very special deal, one that she’s not going to offer to many, only those who are ‘special’. Because you still believe in your fairy godmother you don’t really question her, you take the offer and wait for all the good things you were promised.

And you wait, and wait, and wait...

After quite a long wait, you gently query your fairy godmother. She replies that she’s doing her best but has been let down by the gnomes she’d so kindly given employment to. Not to worry though because she’s moved to a place where the gnomes are far more reliable. Your wait will soon be over.

So, you wait, and wait, and wait...

Once again, you ask your fairy godmother "when?" Once again she regales you with tales of betrayal and ‘evil gnomes’. Only this time it’s worse! The ruling council of gnomes have turned on her and she has to run for her life!

Oh, poor fairy godmother, it seems everyone is turning against her. Still, you hope that her promises will be upheld, eventually.

You begin to connect with others who follow the fairy godmother, some are actively helping her to fulfil her promises, she even has some loyal gnomes working on the problem.

By now you’re getting a little fed up with the wait, so you ask again when the promises she made will come to fruition. This time her answer is, to say the least a little ‘testy’. Don’t you realise she asks, I have problems and a personal life to live as well. She tells you to be patient and to continue to believe in her, all will be well in the end.

So, you wait, and wait, and wait...

At this point, you’ve begun to see a little darkness creeping in, but you continue to hope that the promises made to you will come to pass, one day.

Then, tragedy strikes! The fairy godmother blasts out a message that the gnome she trusted the most has taken everything, hacked all her accounts, stolen her gold and tried to ruin her. She also tells you that this wicked gnome has stolen all the gold that was earmarked for you too. The gnome must be caught, the gnome must be punished. YOU must join with her in attacking the gnome.

You’re spell shocked, what to do? You try and find something to tell you how the gnome, clever though he might be, could fool and foil your fairy godmother.

She soon tells you, he had help! A gang of gnomes masquerading as fairy followers had ganged up on the fairy godmother and not only stolen the gold but hacked her magic accounts to do it.

The spell is broken, you learn that instead of a fairy godmother she was in fact, a troll.

Back in the real world.

You may think that that fairy tale couldn’t and wouldn’t happen in real life. No one could get away with it, no one could fool people and fool so many without at least one or two finding out.

It happens more often than you would think. Claiming your account was hacked (and who can prove otherwise) is a classic way of avoiding the consequences of what you say and do.

I’ve been running social media accounts for years, since there were social media accounts to manage and not once have I had an account hacked. That may be luck, who knows, anyone can be hacked after all.

What I find difficult to understand is why someone who promotes themselves as a ‘social media expert’ would continuously and consistently get hacked. Why they would, as a serious business person, write slanderous comments about people publicly. Or, I’ll say once again, how they keep getting hacked.

You can require many levels of authentication, there are password generators out there that generate complicated passwords difficult to hack. Now we come to why I gave my definition of ‘hacked’ because often, what people mean when they say hacked is hijacked.

They’ve given their login details to people and allowed them access to their accounts. This is not being hacked, it may qualify as hijacked if they post comments or images that are negative.

But here’s the thing, when someone complains they’ve been hacked or hijacked, you have no way of knowing if it’s true (unless you’re the hacker or hijacker). So always check, do a search for the name and hacked as in “fairy godmother” + hacked. If you find a lot of instances of the fairy godmother being hacked, then I would question whether they’re a person you should pay attention to!