KnowEm is happy to announce communications consultant and owner of Sevans Strategy Sarah Evans addition to our advisory board, lending her expertise on public relations, journalism and social media and sharing five tips on how to keep your identity safe on social media.

Sarah (@PRSarahEvans), a longtime friend and supporter of KnowEm, is everything from a PR entrepreneur to one of America’s “Tweethearts,” but it’s her personal mission to engage and employ the use of emerging technologies in all communication that connects her with a rapidly growing base of more than 60,000 people.

Sarah created and moderates #Journchat, the first-ever weekly live tweetchat for public relations professionals, journalists and bloggers. She runs her own blog at PRsarahevans.com and shares a daily resource for public relations professionals called Commentz.

In recognition of Evans’ role on the advisory board, here are five tips from Evans and KnowEm to keep your identity safe on social media:

1. Avoid malicious links – Be careful when clicking on links, particularly if receiving a direct message (DM) with a link – even if it’s from a trusted source.

“Of the shortened URLs leading to malicious websites that Symantec observed on social networking sites over the three-month period in 2010, 73 percent were clicked 11 times or more, with 33 percent receiving between 11 and 50 clicks. Only 12 percent of the links were never clicked,” according to the Symantec study.

2. Monitor third-party app access – Check in Facebook, Twitter and other social media accounts for third-party apps that you may or may not have granted access to your accounts. If you don’t trust or recognize the connection, revoke the apps access.

3. Strengthen your passwords – To help prevent cyber attacks and phishing scams, make sure your password is at least six characters long and contains a series of numbers, letters and punctuation marks if possible. Facebook advises not to use words found in the dictionary and select a password that’s different from any other password you select on the Internet.

4. If your Twitter account is hacked – If you notice unexpected tweets or DMs sent from your account or receive an email that you recently changed your email address associated with the account without taking any action, most likely, you have been hacked. If this happens, log out of the account, clear your browser cache and your browsing history. Once done, open a new browser window, log in and change your password and revoke access to any unrecognized third-party apps.

5. If your Facebook account is hacked – If status updates or comments appear on your account that you didn’t write, you might have been hacked. Reset your password (if able to access your Facebook login, hit “forgot your password” link to switch). After, clear your browser cache, delete your Internet history and monitor your access to third-party apps on Facebook.

Please help us in welcoming Sarah to the KnowEm family!