If you value the information (data) stored in your Facebook account, you should take steps to protect it from unauthorized users. Not only would you make it difficult for hackers to take over your account, you will be protecting your Facebook “friends” which some of whom are your families. When your Facebook account is compromised, the hacker can then message all your friends and do unwanted things. Like request for money pretending to be you, and now they have access to all your private data like cell phone number, address and not only your information, but all information you can see about your Facebook “friends” is now accessible to the hacker. So not only are you protecting yourself, you are protecting your family and friends as well. It might not be apparent but it is a great responsibility to have a Facebook account.
Not only would you make it difficult for hackers to take over your account, you will be protecting your Facebook “friends” which some of whom are your families.
In this era of our existence, this era is being termed the information age. A little bit of history. We started as gatherers, gathering food and then when we discovered tools, we shifted into the agricultural age as we started to farm/grow our own food rather than just collecting things. From these tools we made many things that not only relate to farming and therefore shifted to industrial age as we mass produce things for use. Because our uncle Harry also wants a machine that can plow the land because the cows that were pulling the plows weren’t just cutting it (Although it was a great start!). Now we have reached the information age and pretty much all around us are data. Our data is very valuable data and not only to us but to other select type of people. The people that commit fraud using other peoples data. So in a way data is the new commodity. Our next age and it is brewing right now is the artificial intelligence age. That is just around the corner. A lot of talk about artificial intelligence can be found from Ted.com.
Your Facebook Data
The first step you can take to protect your Facebook data from being lost forever is to make a copy of it. (Lo and behold, Facebook actually has a way to let us download our very own data, but this didn’t come by default. After some protests, Facebook finally let us have our own data. :))) ) This allows us to download our data from Facebook to our local computer so we can have access to it in case our online Facebook account gets taken over (hacked). To do this, log into your Facebook account and click on settings. Usually located on the top right at the time of this writing. If it has changed, just keep looking. The Facebook settings button is usually under the drop down arrow on the top right of the Facebook page when you are logged in to your Facebook account. Under the general tab, there is a link called “download a copy of your Facebook data”. When you click the link it should take you to a page like screenshot below. Then click on the button Start My Archive.
You will be prompted for your Facebook password. After entering the Facebook password you will get another screen like below.
Once the process it complete, Facebook will send you an email to download your data. Just follow the instruction from Facebook that is sent to your email.
Facebook account protection
Use complex password
Now onto how to actually harden up your Facebook account from hackers. First thing is to at least make it a little harder to guess your password. Don’t use your combination of your name as password. This can be easily guessed. Nor your birthdate or phone number. Basically don’t use personal information as your password. Use combination of words and capital letters and numbers. An idea is to think of a sentence and use it’s abbreviation. For example the sentence, “The world is a great place”. If you take the first word it would be “twiagp”. Now just added some Capitalization, letter and some other non alphabet character you can have a password like this, “Twiagp!337”. This type of password is considered complex password and should be used.
Facebook Security Setting
Now it’s time to adjust your Facebook security settings so it is harder for unauthorized users to gain access to your beloved Facebook account. After all it is your private account and we would like to keep it that way.
Once again click on the settings link on Facebook and click on the security tab and you should see the Facebook security settings like pictured below.
Login Alerts
Now click on “login alerts” and enable it. Then you should get alerts from email and in addition you can add a phone number to get alerts sent to you to your phone.
Login Approvals
Next click on “Login Approval” and you should see a whole bunch of settings ready to be activated come to your defense. 🙂 What is odd is that these settings have been here for a while and a lot of users are not aware of it. This brings the quote for mention.
Knowledge is power.
Click on two factor authentication if it’s not enabled. This is a must for your Facebook protection. What is does is that every time you login from a device that is currently not known to Facebook , like if you login from a device for the very first time, it will send you a code to your phone which you will enter in addition to your password. Once you log in, Facebook will ask if you want to remember that device so you don’t have to enter the code each time. For example you would want to do this from your home computer but never when you are accessing your account at the internet cafe or from someone else’s computer (no matter how nice they appear 🙂 ). As you can see from the above screen shot, there are some more settings to configure if you want to go further, but just enabling Facebook two factor authentication above is one of the most important step you can take to log into your account.
In the future, the other options can be covered is there is a demand for it. For now just enabling Facebook two factor authentication is the one big step to secure you account. Once it is enabled, a user basically has to have your phone and your password in order to successfully log into your account. Before, all they need is your password to gain access to your account.