noFUD – No Fear Uncertainty or Doubt

Ok. I’m going to make an exception from my general rule of focusing on deep analysis and not providing technology–specific security how-to’s.  Some of my friends and family could definitely benefit from securing their Facebook accounts.

The Change: Facebook is rolling out new security features over the next few weeks that will allow you to securely connect to the website. In technical terms, they are enabling SSL based secure HTTPS connections by default to your account.

How to Enable the Setting: Log in to your Facebook account. Then go the top right click the following in order Account-> Account Settings->Account Security. That should bring you to the view below:

Check the “Secure Browsing (https)” box and click Save. If you, don’t see the above setting don’t worry. Facebook will probably take a couple of weeks (till mid-Feb) to enable all accounts. Check back in in a few weeks.

Should you care: Absolutely. If you have ever visited Facebook from a coffee shop, airport or even your home Wi-Fi, then you should enable this setting. It will make it much harder for someone from stealing your Facebook password. By doing this, Facebook now meets the common minimum bar for website security. This setting does not make all of Facebook secure, you still need to follow basic security advice.

I’m glad to see Facebook taking this action. Over the past few months, several people have asked for my help in securing their accounts, usually after they have been hacked. This should provide them with some added protection.

This entry was posted on January 28, 2011 at 1:03 pm and is filed under Facebook, Privacy, Security. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.