Are you prepared in case your social media is hacked?

Have you backed up your LinkedIn profile? Facebook? Copied the titles, keywords, photos in Twitter, Instagram,.... etc?  And your other profiles too?

How long have you spent in getting your social profiles 'just right'? The right keywords, connections, descriptions, employment histories, until it is the perfect representation of your 'online self'?

Like most people, (including you) getting a social media profile right is an iterative process that can take place over many years.

But have you got all that information secured, protected, backed up? What if your social media profile gets hacked or deleted?

And clicking just one wrong link can undo all that hard work, or perhaps destroy your reputation or hard-won audience. And it doesn't have to be malware -it can be as simple as as authorizing an app that then posts a stream of 'dribble' to your timeline. 

And it's not just your job history, it's recommendations, connections, followers, endorsements, projects, content links and past comments that are all at risk. Everything in fact.

The good news is that there's a very simple and easy 'vaccination' to this problem. Nothing to buy, nothing to spend, no consultants to pay, no software to download. Nada.

Keep reading & I tell you why, then how.

Social media hacking is apparently on the rise. In the last month, I've seen 8 incidences where connections have had their social media profiles hacked or hi-jacked, and in another 2 cases, cloned. 

So imagine having your account hi-jacked & wiped.  Imagine having your twitter account hacked and not be able to reclaim it? Or all your Linked In connections get spammed. What would that do to your professional reputation? What would it take to start again? How would you even remember what you had lost?

Would you even know where to start?

To be fair, some networks do a better job of protecting you than others. And for the most part, they all take security seriously. But most hacks don't occur because of network security issues -usually it's the fault of "the nut that holds the wheel" - you or I. 

So what can you do to protect yourself? Good question -I'm not a social media guru, so I don't have a vast knowledge of how-to's (or my favourite hate "top 10 tips & tricks")-though I do have a vested interest in the profiles of my connections- they are usually people that I care about. 

Here's what I do. About every 2 months, I download an archive backup of my LI profile. That's it.

When I first recently downloaded an archive of my LinkedIn history, the wealth of information from that one archive, about my social media activity, was immense. Apart from those listed above - articles shared, commented upon.... -in fact there were 34 separate files that contained a mix of personal and private information. 

And it's simple; 4 clicks, wait 24-48 hours, and 1 more click when it's done. Here's how.

First, schedule a recurring reminder in your calendar to backup your profiles.

For Linked In:

1. Log in to your Linked In account.
2.  Hover over your image in the top-right corner, and the click on "Privacy and Settings"
3. Click the bottom right hand "Account" tab
4. On the lower right, click "Request an archive of your data"
5. Click the blue "request Archive" button on the right.
6. And in 24-48 hours, you should get an email telling you how to download the archive with one click.

And then I do the same with Facebook and with Twitter.

For Twitter, here is the direct link to access your setting page. Scroll to the bottom and you will see an option to request your archive. Click on that, and twitter will send you a link via eMail which will have backup of all your tweets

On my other social media profiles, whenever I update them, I always copy and paste the text & keywords into a storage program. One-note & Evernote are good, but most phones have a notepad function these days.

 I've also recently backed up my Twitter feed. And as I rarely use the other networks, I don't have to worry too much about them. But you might 'live' in other platforms'.

So , as I said, I'm not an expert, just a "concerned citizen"; if you've got suggestions about how to protect your online profiles, please continue the conversation and post them below for the benefit of others. 

If you like this post, comment on and share it.

I also promise that you'll enjoy my upcoming books on how you can apply these rules to your life and your business.

StartUp books due soon for release

• "Before You Quit Your Day Job"
• "After You Quit Your Day Job"
• "Confessions of a Serial Entrepreneur"

Review your advance copy of the 1st book.

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About Daniel

Also traveling under the alias of 'That Startup Guy' , I am a co-founder of StartUp Foundation (The Startup Accelerator for Experienced Professionals) and am intensely, deeply, passionately dedicated to "The intersection between personal mastery & business entrepreneurship".

My goal is to help you, by guiding you through the steps, and past the challenges and pitfalls, to turn that 'Great Idea' into reality, whether it's a business, a product, an app or just finding an answer to a common problem. 

If you've got an experience about startup success (or failure), comment about it. If you've got a question, reach out to me via your preferred social media, or download my media/speakers kit. Other posts can be found here on Linkedin.