By: Kiley Landusky
Reently, mutiple twitter accounts have been hacked, but some are choosing to go faux. MTV chose to falsely hack their own Twitter account in response to the recent hackings of Jeep and Burger King Twitter accounts. Is this a smooth move in the public relations world? Most think not. Although it picked up attention, MTV’s wild idea weakened their trust with the public.
Its perhaps “immature” reaction to the situation was quite contrary to the other powerful businesses seriously involved with social media. A laughing matter to MTV was a serious crisis for others. The fear of trademark symbols being replaced with their competition and a loss of precious customers and followers set in and caused a rapid change in security for many companies.
Following the media crisis, PR Daily reposted a previous article from their site giving tips on how to keep social media secure. The best and most obvious solution PR Daily gave was to create complex passwords including a combination of capital letters, multiple characters and numbers. It also suggested purchasing password managers or utilizing free password managers to aide in creating unique passwords.
Using the same password is convenient to the individual and takes little memory capacity but is a serious risk when considered in public relations and big name companies. Extra security measures are a must and are held in high regard only when crises like Burger King’s and Jeep’s occurs. May this be a lesson to all handling social media for a sacred brand; take the extra step and protect your image!
