By Adriana Gutierrez

Having your personal accounts hacked is not something everyone worries about, but it can certainly happen, as it did to me recently. It is highly frustrating, humiliating, and time consuming. This is my experience, and what I learned from it.

I noticed something strange was going on with my Snapchat. While using the app, all of a sudden, I would get logged out, but honestly, I just thought it was because of the internet. This started to become more frequent, which made me doubt how secure my account was.

Then while I was about to answer a friend through Snapchat, it happened again. At first, I wasn’t worried since it had happened before. When I tried to log back in, supposedly the password was wrong, so I typed it again, and it still was wrong. That’s when I started to panic.

At that point, I tried to log in like twenty times, and still nothing. I just couldn’t believe this was happening to me. My frustration was at its peak. A few tears came also because I usually take pictures with Snapchat, so I had a lot of memories there.

When some of my friends learned about my problem, they tried to help me by convincing the person who hacked my account to return it back to me. They tried so hard that whoever had my account said, “It was a mistake,” and I was able to log in again.

I’m grateful for what they all did.  When I checked the settings, whoever did this went to the trouble of making a new email with my name but with a different phone number.

The day after my Snapchat got hacked, I thought the problems were over, but it was the beginning of another dilemma.  While using Instagram, all of a sudden, I got logged out and couldn’t get back in. At that moment. I realized that for both my Snapchat and Instagram accounts I had the same password. It was unbelievable that this was happening again.

I decided to take this in a calm way since it was just an account, and it was not like Snapchat. I tried to contact the person holding my account by DM, but they kept reading my message with no response until they said, “I will give you back.” To me it didn’t make sense.

Days passed by and my account was still in the hands of another person, until my friend told me that the person was using my account to scam people. Then I decided to make a new account and let everyone know that if they received something weird from the old account, it was not from me. I think it was the best decision.

Since social media is all over the world captivating people, it’s important to be aware that while we use these accounts, we sometimes attach them to different applications and devices. Securing them then becomes a necessity.

There are many ways to protect your accounts. What I did was enable the two factor authentication in the settings of my phone which, every time I log in, gives me a new code that nobody else has access to.

Updating apps is also important. According to the article “How to Secure Your Business’s Social Media Accounts”, posted on the website for Business News Daily, it’s important to have the latest version of the application since each update increases the security.

Not all websites can be trusted, and not all online friends are truly friends. A website post from the U.S. Security and Exchange Commission said, “When choosing friends or contacts on a social media site, think about why you use the website. Decide whether it is appropriate to accept a friend.”

Also, for security purposes, pick strong passwords and change them frequently. I learned from experience to never use the same password for different accounts. I made a silly mistake with my social media security just because I didn’t want to confuse myself by having all my accounts with different passwords.

My Snapchat account is back to normal now with no more log outs. What used to be my old Instagram account is like a brand-new account. The person deleted my pictures and changed the username. This is a complete relief to me because now I don’t have to be worried that another person is doing something using my face as if it were me. I might not have the same number of followers now in Instagram, but at least I’m at peace with myself.

Although I think people shouldn’t be messing with other’s privacy, I learned from this experience. For me, it was a wakeup call that I was not securing my accounts like I am supposed to.