Facebook has been the topic of many security and privacy headlines with a number of consumer protection agencies recently filing complaints with the Federal Trade Commission to members of the controversial hacker group Anonymous vowing to hack Facebook on November 5. Additionally, with the rise of spam and fraud on Facebook there is an increasing need to be aware of the type of actions that might compromise your Facebook profile. Here are some tips to keep you safe:
Secure password – Passwords such as “1234”, “ABCD” or “AAAA” are easily brute-force cracked by hackers. We recommend that you use at least 1 letter, at least 1 capital letter, at least 1 number and at least 1 symbol. Here is an example: “AFK2@now”. Try Microsofts Password Checker.
Reject friend requests from unknown persons – We recommend that you never become “friends” with people that you don’t know. Once you’ve accepted a request from a new source, your profile and whatever personal information you have entered into it will open itself to that person.
Be careful when installing new Facebook applications – When applying new applications to your Facebook page, we recommend doing a quick Google search before installing anything. Try finding reviews of the application to find out whether or not it is legitimate. A couple minutes of your time can potentially save you much more as certain malicious applications contain Trojans.
Do not open links from friends that contain an “aggressive” header – These types of links are seldom shared by your friends, they are spread automatically via their profiles because they have entered the advocated page themselves, a page which is likely infected with malware. You can report malicious links here: Report Malicious Link
Report to Facebook – If you think you were a victim of account hacking. You can contact Facebook directly here: Privacy@facebook.com.
We hope this post helps you to act safely on Facebook. If you have any questions regarding Facebook security or privacy concerns don’t hesitate to ask us here, or join us on Facebook for additional discussions not found on our blog.
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Great tips, I will pass this on to my friends!
Dear Sirs,
I’m not using the Facebook very much. Thanks for your warnings
G. Heller
good tips, a lot of people add heaps of friends they dont know just to get a benefit in the games. personally I got sick of the requests from people I don’t know leading me to simply delete my account.
Oh! These are informative tips. This is very useful for me and others. I will be carefully for hacking.
Thanks for this sharing post.
I am truly considering leaving Facebook. Lots of my family keep touch on here. I joined for that reason. We can share info about sick older family members and keep in touch easily. Why does a good thing like this have to be bad? We really cannot trust anymore. With the porn mess on this site I hate to think people have to be subjected to stuff like that.
How about Google + for those of us who choose not to FB.
there are so many people on facebook who have many different accounts that you don’t know what’s real and who is trying to scam you, the advice above is a great starting point.
Hi Jack, we’ll soon post a similar blog entry about Google+ and Twitter
Ontzettend bedankt voor de adviezen c.q. raadgevingen
Hi,
FaceBook and all the other social sites are for those who donot have real friends or speak eye to eye. In the speed of action all attention to detail is lost to greed. More More More information. Do we need this worldwide JUNK, NO we do not. But at least pay some more attention to the guidelines made by Spamfighter. Negatively one day your phone/computer/system will be hacked. So be carefull.
Lets talk some more to each other face to face.