With more than 800 million active users, Facebook has become part of our daily lives. We love having the ability to connect easily with family and friends. However, that ability to readily connect leaves many Facebook users susceptible to hackers. Facebook estimates that accounts are hacked 600,000 times daily during users’ log-in according to an article in the NY Daily News.
Greg Hudson, the Digital Media Manager for the Council of Better Business Bureaus, offers these tips for preventing your Facebook account from being hacked.
Make sure that your ‘Secure Browsing’ is enabled – That means your browser uses https instead of the standard connection.
How to change your setting – While on Facebook, look at your URL address in the browser. If you see “http:” instead of “https:” you DO NOT have a secure session. It’s easy to change. Just go to Account (upper right) click Account Settings… Then Security – click Change. Check box (secure browsing), click Save.
Regularly change your password – Get in the routine of changing your password often. Try to use a combinations of upper & lower case numbers/special characters and don’t use any parts of your first or last name.
Enable login notifications – Click on Account Settings … then Security … then enable login notifications. This will cause Facebook to notify you when your account is accessed from a computer or mobile device that you haven’t used before.
Don’t click on suspicious links while browsing Facebook.
Never give your login info to anyone.
For those of you with children on Facebook, see our tips on safe social networking.
Also see:
Recent Scam Via Facebook Offers Valuable Reminder
Social Network Misspelling Scam
Identity Protection on Social Networking Sites
