Written by: Maison Martin

Rookie Reporter

Social media is a place to connect with family and friends but a part of social media that is heavily overlooked is the hackers. According to www.dataport.net,¨30 million facebook accounts were compromised.¨ Anyone can get hacked and it is as simple as clicking a link. Terrance Ross a student at liberty high school was asked if he was ever hacked and he explained that he was. He said he was hacked on instagram. When asked what happened he said one day he got an email that his password was changed and then he was locked out of the account. He did end up getting the account back but others are not so lucky. Gizelle Garcia, another student at liberty high school was also hacked on instagram. When asked what happened she said that she got a message from a friend asking for a $5 venmo and when she clicked the link to get redirected to the friends venmo account it was not actually a link to venmo but rather a link to pull her information. She was not lucky enough to get her account back.

Now that you know getting hacked can happen to anyone, how do you prevent it? Well for starters do not push any unknown links even if it is a trusted friend. You should also always have 2fa (two-factor authentication) which is essentially just making sure you are you. Another tip you should incorporate is make sure you have very strong passwords that are almost impossible to guess. Ms.Robinson, a teacher at Liberty High school who had been previously hacked was asked how she would prevent being hacked and she said check the login map feature, a feature that tells you where login attempts were made. Getting hacked is unfortunately very common according to www.phoenix.edu ¨ Nearly Two-Thirds of U.S. Adults with Social Media Accounts Say They Have Been Hacked.¨ This number should not be as high as it is. With that being said it does not need to happen to you as long as you follow the proper precautions, while there is always a chance of it happening make sure to take the proper precautions so your chances of getting hacked are reduced. Stay safe and protect your information.