Last week, the Twitter account of Associated Press was compromised. The week before that it was CBS and 60 Minutes. The month prior, it was Burger King and Jeep. This tells me either hackers are getting smarter, or users/brands/companies aren't taking the time (or effort) to protect their identities online. Maybe both. 

The state of online security is top of mind these days. Here are a few ways to protect your social media accounts from mean ol' hackers.

• If you're handling social media for a client, use a platform that has a team functionality, like Hootsuite (see the video below featuring CEO Ryan Holmes)
• Choose a strong password with characters, numbers and phrases - refrain from using names, birth dates, pet's names, or anything that you've posted publicly online
• Avoid clicking on suspicious links in Direct Messages or Mentions, like this one: "Someone is making up a terrible rumor about you (link removed)"
• Use different passwords for each of your social media accounts 
• Check your third-party apps i.e. applications you have enabled to work with your Facebook/Twitter accounts - remove any apps you don't use or that seem suspicious 

Have you ever shared a negative comment surrounding a brand, product or service to your personal social media sites? If so, you were more than likely ignored; However, the best case scenario is that the brand in question reaches out directly to resolve the issue. More and more brands are turning to this proactive monitoring approach, and while I'm very happy to see this shift, I'm also a bit underwhelmed by how impersonal the messaging is. 

This happened to me recently. In my case, I was trying to "make a funny," if you will. As you can see in the image below, Walgreens' Customer Service "team" responded to my tweet with a generic, impersonal message. Clearly, I didn't have a negative experience at the store.

After doing some research, I learned that Walgreens' Social Care uses Visible Intelligence®, a social media monitoring, analytics and engagement platform powered by Visible Technologies. Unfortunately, [many of] these platforms are unable to gauge sentiment -- positive or negative -- and often send out automated responses without a real, living & breathing person to verify its accuracy.

What do you think? Have you been targeted by a social media monitoring platform recently? It makes me wonder if these monitoring tools & platforms are worth the cost per conversation if they're unable to accurately target a real (unsatisfied) customer with a real (negative) issue.