If you’ve noticed more Facebook friends or Twitter contacts blasting your feed with bizarre, spam-infused posts lately, chances are you’re not the only one. According to reports, social media hacks are on the rise, and many sites and networks are now adding two-factor authentication to boost user security. The latest social media site to join the club: The professionally-based networking tool, LinkedIn.

Facebook, Google, and Microsoft have long used a two-step verification process, which requires users logging into their accounts from  new devices to both enter the right password and then verify their identity, either via email or through text message. Twitter added the security capability just last week, after high-profile publications like E! News and The Onion faced hacks in early May.

Evidently, LinkedIn saw wisdom in the actions of their fellow social media cohorts. Users hoping to take advantage of the new two-step verification process will have to do so manually–through the site’s “Security Settings” menu–but once activated, the function will weed out potential hackers and alert users to the presence of “suspicious activity.”

So how does LinkedIn’s incarnation of the authentication process work? Simple: when two-step verification is activated, users will be prompted to register their mobile phone number with the social media network. Afterward, LinkedIn sends a text to that phone to verify identify. Once verification occurs, two-factor security measures will be in place, and users will receive a similar verification text every time they attempt to log into their LinkedIn account from a new computer or mobile device.

The process is outlined in greater detail in a tutorial posted by LinkedIn on Friday.

Of course, once a device is verified, users will not have to constantly respond to automated text messages in order to access their accounts. But in the event that a hack is attempted, users will be alerted to the activity right away. Hackers will need both their victim’s password and cellphone to break into the account, a practical firewall that should greatly limit the number of security breaches.

Though LinkedIn is probably not the first website to come to mind when the topic of social media hacking is raised, it’s surprising it took the network this long to implement additional security measures. Just last spring, LinkedIn suffered a major breach that resulted in nearly six-and-a-half million passwords being posted on the internet for all to see. The fiasco, along with an ensuing spam campaign that took advantage of the compromised users, was a PR nightmare for the company, who came under fire for not encrypting its passwords in the first place.