Scammers trying to hack into our Facebook profiles have been on the increase lately. If your account is hacked and taken over, it’s quite likely that the first thing a hacker will do is change your Facebook password to prevent you re-gaining access to your account.
Below are the 4 most important security settings available through Facebook, which, if enabled go a long way to helping protect your account.
How scammers gain access to accounts like Facebook is through what it called “Social Engineering” or Phishing, where a scammer might send you an email or message that purports to be from an institution or person you would normally trust that includes a link in it that sends you to a website that asks for your Facebook login details.
Online Security 101: Never click on a link sent to you in a message or email unless you are absolutely sure that it is secure. Go directly to the website that the email or message purports to be from via your usual browser address bar, and login as you normally would. Any message or email that promises to award you a prize or suggests there is a photo or message about you that you need to see, is quite likely a scam.
As my previous post on the latest Facebook scams suggested, one of the most common scams going around Facebook at the moment, is through Facebook account impersonation where you receive a Facebook message or friend request from a Facebook account that looks as if it is from one of your real Facebook friends, the scammer will usually then try to get you into a conversation and try to get you to click on a link.
1. Set Login Notifications:
Be notified via SMS or email if anyone tries to access your account from a different device or browser that you haven’t verified before. That way you can notify Facebook if there is suspicious behavior on your Facebook account.
To Enable – Go To:
Settings – Security – Login Notifications – Edit
2. Set Login Approvals:
Login approvals is Facebook’s version of 2 step verification. Set up your Facebook account so that anytime you or anyone else, log’s into your account from a different browser on a different computer, a generated security code is sent to your mobile device or phone, that you are then asked to put into the login screen, to verify that it is actually you attempting to log in. This way anyone trying to access your account would have to have your mobile device or phone to accept the security code. You can receive the security codes via SMS or via Code generator which set up on your mobile Facebook account on your mobile device whilst connected to the internet.
To Enable – Go To:
Settings – Security – Login Approvals – Edit –
3. Set Trusted Contacts:
Enabling “Trusted contacts” allow you to get back into your Facebook account if someone has hacked it and changed the password locking you out. Be sure to only choose trusted family members to set this up. Once you have chosen your trusted contacts and linked them to your account, they cannot access your account, but if you do get locked out, they can go to a link that you give them to receive a security code that they can then pass on to you, to input into your login to gain access again to your account.
To Enable Go To:
Settings – Security – Trusted Contacts – Edit
4. Hide Your Friends List
All Facebook friends lists are by default set to public viewing. Meaning that a complete stranger can see your list of friends and try to friend them or send them messages. As mentioned in my previous blog post about the scam going around where scammers are impersonating Facebook accounts. If your friends list is set to “Only Me” your account becomes far less attractive to a scammer who then will not have access to your friends list to try and scam them by pretending to be you. Even setting your friends list to “friends only” makes your account more secure and less likely to be impersonated or scammed.
To Enable – Go To:
Your Friends tab under your cover picture. Click on the pencil next to “+Find Friends” – Edit Privacy and then set both Friends List and Following to Only Me. Close to save.
I’m always interested in hearing about the various scams on Facebook. Let me know in the comments if you have come across any lately. What did you do?