You may have recently received an alert from Twitter telling you to change your password, and that may not be the only location. If you use the same password for Twitter as you do for other logins, you should change those as well. Failing to keep unique passwords can put your smart office digital presence at risk. There was not a known breach at Twitter; however, there was a bug that may have made your passwords visible to other parties so out of an abundance of caution, the company is requesting you make the change.

Here’s what happened

Twitter utilizes encryption to keep passwords safe and secure, but they a bug was recently identified that unmasked passwords in plain text on an internal log. The issue is fixed and the company reports that there was no known breach or misuse, and they requested that their more than 300 million followers change their passwords.

How to change your password
If you are logged in or in the app, you can go to “Settings and Privacy” to change your password, or if you do not know your password you can reset it directly through their reset page. While you are making the change, another security tool you can add is two-factor authentication, as well as adding a password reset verification that requires personal information. Two-factor authentication requires that you provide a code that’s sent to you via text message when you login on a new device. And if you implement password reset verification, you will be required to enter your phone number or email address to make the update.

Change other passwords

If you use the same password across all accounts, you should stop now. Using the same password for all logins puts you at great risk for a breach of your personal, professional and potentially your financial information. Create strong, unique passwords for your logins, or to use a password manager like LastPass and enable two-factor authentication whenever possible.

Have questions or comments about password security? Tell us about it in the comments below, on Twitter via @nerdsquawk or send me an email at [email protected]

The opinions of the author are not necessarily those of Farm Futures or Farm Progress.