Facebook Account Security Best Practices

October is considered the National Cyber Security Awareness Month in the U.S and this October 2013 marked its ten-year anniversary. So, to preserve the memory of this years National Cyber Security Awareness Month, Facebook’s chief security officer Joe Sullivan had made a LIVE Q&A style post on the Facebook Security Page answering questions on Facebook account security and thus helping users to maintain their Facebook account’s security on the top. In this 1 hour LIVE session so many good questions were asked for secured Facebook experience and here are some of the important questions that were answered by Joe.

What’s the Best Way of Protecting Your Privacy on Facebook?

Facebook emphasizes on security so much that it has set in place some privacy settings that enables you to choose the specific audience (for instance ‘friends only’) that can see your posts every time you share something on Facebook. Not using these privacy settings makes everything you post public and visible to everyone on Facebook. So, if you want to have control over what you share and don’t want anyone seeing your stuff then just don’t make it public.

And for sharing something private with any of your friends it’s advisable to use the message feature instead of posting to their wall. This is because it’s not you but your friend has the control on who can see the posts posted to his wall. If he has set the option to the posts posted to his wall to be seen by him only than there’s no problem. Similarly you can set the option in settings so that nobody can see when someone posts to your wall.

For more great tips on protecting your privacy on Facebook visit
Facebook Privacy Page

Joe’s Thoughts on Facebook Facilitating Information Access to NSA

The two positive things that have come out of the coverage of the NSA situation have been raised awareness around internet security and awareness of the need for transparency. We have found much more interest in our efforts in recent years to roll out encryption for all communications on Facebook. And on the transparency side, we’ve been able to convince the US government to allow us to publish some data showing the total number of requests we received, but have also had to file suit to push for more transparency (see this post). Here is a link to the report we published showing some detail on all the information requests we received during the first half of this year: https://www.facebook.com/about/government_requests

Our goals in this context are to only respond to government demands for access to information when we have a legal obligation to do so, and to try to be as transparent as we can about those responses. I hope the interest in internet security remains, and that more transparency follows.

How to Perfectly Secure Your Facebook Account from Hackers?

To keep hackers at bay, you need to select a robust password which is unique for your Facebook account and is at-least 13 characters long if not more. The longer the password you set the more tougher it becomes for the criminal to hack into your account. Besides Facebook account, you’ve to secure your email account password which is particularly important because an attacker can use your email account to reset passwords. And as a safety measure to avoid hacking of accounts remember to never type in your password unless you’re on the real Facebook website. Also consider using login approvals for enhanced security.

Let’s say even after selecting a robust password, someone has discovered your password somehow but still Facebook security team may detect them trying to log in and block their attempt. This is made possible with a built-in system that runs behind the scenes and shows additional challenge questions when a log in looks suspicious. Try log in from a new device or location and you yourself may even receive a challenge question to confirm your identity.

On Facebook How Can We Set Two Way Verification Like Gmail?

Yes you can set two way verification in Facebook also and extend the baseline level of security for your account. That feature in Facebook is called ‘Login Approvals’ and it is highly recommended for stronger security of your Facebook account. With login approvals turned on, when logged in to your account from unknown device, unsaved browser or new location you receive sms text to your mobile phone with a security code which has to be entered to continue log in.

By this security measure compromising your account is not possible even after knowing your password. Here are the details on how to turn on login approvals: https://www.facebook.com/help/www/148233965247823

How to Protect Yourselves from Stalkers/Bullies on Facebook?

Read this Facebook Help Center page that shares some of the tools developed to respond quickly and also some of the do’s & don’ts while dealing with bullying and harassment.

For more info on how to increase your Facebook account’s security, please check this tip sheet created by Facebook Security