Are our Adwords accounts safe? Security in Adwords is a factor that is not negligible but that is often relegated to the background because the client and the agency believe, each in its own way, that the emails with access to Adwords accounts depend on the other party.
Intrusions by strangers into Adwords accounts are becoming more and more frequent, and in addition to the damage they can create in them, they leave users with a feeling of insecurity and suspicion that is very difficult to reverse. When one of these intrusions occurs, Google immediately sends an email to warn the owner of the account of the illegal access to it.
In addition, Google initially paralyzes the entire account and performs a case study, with the delay and inconvenience that this entails. Once Google detects from which account has been accessed and in which campaigns changes have been made, stops those campaigns and deletes them (the campaigns are in "x removed" mode) so that they will not be able to be activated again, it also removes all access permissions from the account through which you have logged in.
If this happens, it will be necessary to set up a new campaign "from scratch", with all the negative consequences in terms of loss of time for the implementation of new campaigns and, above all, for the loss of campaign history and of their quality levels.
Increasing security in Adwords
In most cases, these illicit accesses are made through accounts to which the customers (and not the agencies or managers) had given accesses with permission to edit and in which two-step security was not verifiedGoogle offers to ensure secure access to each of our accounts (not only Adwords, but also email or each of the tools that the computer giant makes available to us).
Security recommendationsproposedfrom Googleare security enhancements at the Google account level:
- Run an updated antivirus and antimalware program.
- Change the Google account password, choosing secure passwords and unique, and updating them on a regular basis.
- Enable the two-step security
In addition to the above we we recommend to all our customers to take the following additional security measures at the Adwords account level, which are as simple to implement as they are effective:
- Grant read-only access permissions to all users who are not going to make changes to the account, these are the typical viewing accesses. It is common to find Adwords accounts in which there are many accesses with editing permissions, what is the point of this if these accounts are not going to make changes in the Adwords account? None. What does happen is that access risks multiplyand may have unauthorized access with possible modifications in the Adwords account,Enable two-step security on accounts with Administrator permission.
- Periodically review the accesses to ensure security in Adwords.
Imagine that they enter your Adwords account and make a modification in the campaign that gives the best results... By following these simple steps you minimize the risk of this happening.
As a Digital Marketing Agency, we recommend to our colleagues that, in order to improve Adwords security, they should review the accesses that each new agency account has, and talk to the client to transmit the above steps and thus ensure their security in Adwords. And you, how do you protect your Adwords accounts?
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