Social Media. This is something that is on everyone’s mind at the moment, even more than usual after the “outage” on Monday evening. As an integrated PR & Communications agency we use Social Media A LOT. Social Media is a great tool to grow your business, keep in touch with your customers and to learn about what they want, but as we have seen it has its faults. Going completely offline isn’t usually one of them, something that CAN be a massive pitfall is security.
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought massive changes to the world, including an acceleration in remote work and an increase in the amount of time we spend online. These changes have also led to an increase in cybercrime and fraudulent activity across the internet.
Attackers use social engineering techniques like phishing or prompting people to download malicious third-party apps or software to steal their Facebook login credentials, which gives attackers access to these tools.
The attackers can then run ads from your account, change the admins on your pages and change your passwords so you don’t have access. This can result in losing money but also losing clients.
We’ve put together our top tips on how to keep your accounts safe.
Use a business email address. Add your business email to your Business Manager and associated ad accounts and closely monitor your email for notifications from Facebook.
Implement two-factor authentication. Require everyone associated with your Business Manager, including partners, to sign up and use two-factor authentication.
Turn on notifications. Sign up to receive change and update alerts around Business Manager roles, ad accounts and ad approvals. Confirm which email will receive these alerts and ensure you use a closely monitored email address.
Monitor ads and spending. We encourage you to check any active ads and your account billing weekly to ensure all activity is in line with your expectations.
Check your advert rules. Hackers can setup rules in the ad accounts that can turn ads back on every 30 minutes no matter what.
Log out regularly. If you’re not actively using your Business Manager, be sure to log out.