7 Steps To Take When Hackers Hit Your Twitter Account

"Just noticed a picture that was tweeted from my account last night. I was hacked. I am a dad. Please don't view it, it's private. #ruinedlife."

Hackers have become ‘crueler’ these days. Personally, I fear them, wondering what I would do should any one of my numerous social media accounts catch their attention. It would be a disaster to lose any to those darned hackers, after all the effort I put in.

Anyway, should your Twitter account ever gets hacked, here are the steps you should quickly take, knowing that you have to fix the problem immediately because, while you dither, the hacker is eroding your reputation with damning tweets and DMs.

1. Try to log into your Twitter account. If you succeed (meaning the thief did not change your password), change your password into something much different and complex. This will stop the hacker and give you control. Remember to make your new password strong/complex.

If you can’t log in, you'll have to going to have to go through Twitter's customer service and submit a Support request.

2. Secure your email address. You have to ensure that the email address with which you registered for Twitter is secure. Changing the passwords to that email might be a good idea too.

3. Disconnect your Twitter from all third party applications/sites. If like me, your Twitter is linked to your Facebook, Blog, LinkedIn, Tumblr and other places/apps, revoke all of them – you can re-link the trusted ones later.

To do this, log in to Twitter, click 'Apps' in your settings and click 'Revoke access' for all applications you don't recognize.

4. Update passwords. Go back to your trusted third-party applications and devices and update your password so that you can keep using them, otherwise, you may be temporarily locked out of your account.

5. Apologise to your followers. Once you've successfully changed the password, send out a tweet apologizing to your followers. Let them know that the tweets sent by the hackers weren't yours.

6. Clean up. Delete all the tweets that you did not send but are appearing among your tweets.

7. Get additional protection. Twitter offers you a more secure way to log in. Click here to read more of that.

Now, your account should be secure and you can go tweeting again.