My Twitter page has been restored finally! Turns out someone hacked into my account and deleted it. They then locked me out of my account by creating a fake email in my name and linking it to my account, so I couldn’t reset my password. Awesome! *writes a list of people who may hate me*

At any rate, I have learnt some valuable lessons in protecting my social media from being hacked:

1. Set a Very Strong Twitter password. One that isn’t your favourite sports team, colour, a sequence of numbers like 123456, the word “password” or “iheartRobertPattinson”.
2. Create unique passwords for your Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, Blog & other social nets. If one is compromised, you could lose your entire lifestream. I used the same password for many accounts. And though it was a strong password, I think the fact that I used it for everything made it vulnerable.
3. Be careful giving out your Twitter username and password to 3rd Party Apps. I had four 3rd party Twitter apps on my iPhone, two desktop apps, in addition to TwitPic, Flickr to Twitter app, Twitter to Facebook app, and many others I didn’t even remember I had signed up for. Be very cautious and keep track of which apps use your password.
4. Link your phone number to your Twitter account, so that it can be used to retrieve your password in the event that your account and email address is compromised. You can plug your phone number into Twitter under the device tab.
5. Back-up your Twitter! I would’ve never even considered this before, but the thought losing 2 1/2 years of tweet history made me sad. So sad I had to eat many cupcakes. Many. It wasn’t pretty folks. There are several services that allow you to back up your Tweets, including BackupmyTweets, TweetBackup, TweeTake & Twistory. I’m going to try few. I’ll get back to you on which one is the best.

After nearly a week of being without a tweet, I realize how pathetically dependent I am on Twitter and how much time I actually spend Twittering. Because without it, I wander the web aimlessly, listen and download an embarrassing amount of tv shows & indie music. Then there’s the watching of said depressing music, tv shows, and the slow deterioration of said tv shows from witty British mockumentaries to crappy CW teen vampire dramas.

All I have to say is vampires should eat cheerleaders, not play football in the sunlight. #vampirediaries

Do you have any tips on how to protect or backup your social media?