How to change your LinkedIn and Twitter Password after the Great Social Media Hacking of 2016

Hackers are having a field day of late. Call it the Great Social Media Hacking of 2016.

First in May 2016  they hacked LinkedIn and leaked some 117 million logins on an online forum in Russia a reported in the article “Millions of hacked LinkedIn IDs advertised 'for sale'”, published 18 May 2016, BBC News.

Then in June 2016, they struck Twitter, using click-bait style malware to steal the passwords of some 32 million Twitter users as reported in “Passwords for 32M Twitter accounts may have been hacked and leaked”, published June 8, 2016 by Catherine Shu, Techcrunch.

I could go into details about these hacks, as the use of click-bait style malware is reason why the Jamaican Government websites get hacked so often as pointed out in my blog article entitled “Why Jamaican Government Websites are still hackable despite Cyber Incident Response Report”.

But as I’ve pointed out in that article, the best defense is to change your reading habits as it relates to email; read careful, use the hover method to preview links before you click on them and don’t open email attachments that look suspicious.

So without further ado, here's a quick primer on how to change your LinkedIn and Twitter Passwords.

How to change your LinkedIn and Twitter Passwords – Two-Step Verification as Second Wave Coming

To change your LinkedIn Login credentials, follow the following steps.

First login to your LinkedIn account.

Then click on your profile logo in the upper right to reveal a drop down menu. From that menu select Privacy and Settings.

A new menu appears. Select the option Change Passwords.

Once you select this option, you'll get the chance to enter your old password for verification and change and confirm a new password.

Once you've entered a very good password, LinkedIn will advise you if your password change was a success and if it is a strong password.

At this point, you can log out and be about your merry way.

At this point, it bears saying that many online users would benefit from the application of two-step verification as an added layer of protection as I'd explained in my blog article entitled “How to access your @Twitter Log in History - Stronger Password and Two Step Verification required”.

This even after they've been compromised, as hackers cannot beat two-step verification; true for both Twitter and LinkedIn accounts, whose passwords and login are worth their weight in Gold bullion. In future articles, on the Geezam and MICO Wars The Teacher Force Awakens, I'll go into details as to how to change the passwords of your other online accounts to secure yourself.

Based on chatter on the Dark Web, I suspect this is the first wave; the first woe is passed and the second half of this Great Social Media Hacking of 2016 is yet to be played out.