By Jim Calloway

If you use Facebook, it is fairly common to see a post from a friend saying “I’ve been hacked. Don’t accept any friends requests from me.”

But today some lawyers use Facebook for marketing and so getting locked out of their account is a much bigger problem than missing a brother-in-law’s post on sports.

Since the best “cure” for a compromised account is to not be compromised in the first place, we should proactively tighten security.  Now is a good time to change your password to something longer and to set up Facebook’s multifactor authentication. It is also time to make your friends’ list private. I appreciate the value of a public friend’s list, but friend’s lists are how scams and account compromises are spread on Facebook. If you encourage clients to follow your firm on Facebook, then hiding the list is even more important. If many clients’ names are visible in your friends list, it could be a matter of concern. But primarily you do not want to be a conduit for a cyber-attack and, just imagine if your clients were compromised after receiving a Facebook invitation saying, “Your lawyer Jim suggested we should make a connection!”

If your best efforts fail and your Facebook account is compromised, Kurt the CyberGuy has just published Lost access? Here’s how to reclaim your Facebook account – CyberGuy. He starts with the simple steps. But he has many suggestions, depending on your issue.