Get Twitter back after a hack

The fix: You get a DM or a response from one of your Twitter friends; they ask about an odd message or tweet that came from your account. You look, and sure enough, your account has sent out messages to a mess of your followers, all with a message about earning hundreds of dollars from your own home or something like "Hey, what r u doin in this video," followed by a link.

What do you do? You immediately -- IMMEDIATELY -- change your password. How? Get to your settings -- they're in a drop-down menu you'll find by clicking the little faceless guy in the upper right corner of Twitter's Web interface -- and click on the "password" tab. You'll enter the old password and the enter a new one twice.

Most of the time, that will be enough. If it's not, the next thing to try is to submit a password-change request to Twitter, via a form you'll find in the Twitter support pages. That will be enough for 99 percent of hacked accounts, but if you're a lucky 1 percenter, you'll need to file a Twitter support request; that can be a long, frustrating process, but that will almost always solve your problem.

Prevention: If you've just regained control of your account, you're not done. You should also take a minute and check out the third-party apps that have access to your stuff. And even if you haven't been hacked, it's a good idea to review that stuff occasionally anyway, because that's generally where the hacks come from.

How? Go back to the settings page on your account, but this time click on the "Apps" tab. You'll see a list of every third-party app that has access to your account. If you're recovering from a hack, revoke access for all of them. It's a pain, yes, because you'll have to go back and re-authorize the stuff you actually use, but securing your account is the more important thing here.

Even if you haven't been hacked, take a run through that list every few months or so. See any apps you don't recognize? Delete them right now. See others you don't use? Cut those too. Keep that list lean, and you'll narrow the chances that someone's going to take over your account.

Don't click. The last thing to do is actually a thing not to do. No matter how tempting it is to see exactly what's on the other side of that link you get in that DM, don't do it. What's on the other side? Chances are, it's not good for your computer, and it could lead to your account getting hacked as well. If you get a DM that doesn't make sense -- you know there's no video, the sender is writing in a way that seems unusual -- delete it and let the sender know that it's probably time for a new password.

Because they've been hacked.

Currency : timesonline