If you’re a Facebook user at all, and even if you’re not, you might have heard of problems in the past with Facebook as far as security is concerned. For example, the recent Firefox “firesheep” add-on that allows somebody in your vicinity to hijack your credentials for Facebook and have access to your account, and the countermeasures that ensued after the add-on went viral. This was covered in an earlier article, and the handling given to users was to use an add-on that would force the use of a secure connection when using certain websites, like Facebook. You can read my recent article about it here.

But now Facebook itself has included in the user settings a way to use secure connections when possible, regardless of what web browser or what computer you’re using. Furthermore, it gives you the ability to monitor the details of where has your account been accessed from recently, which would give you an idea of whether or not to suspect hijacking activity, plus it gives you the ability to terminate a suspected connection to your account. It also gives you now the ability to receive an email or text message if your account is accessed from a new device.

Ok so now as to the how-to. From the top right of the Facebook website, click on Account, then select Account Settings from the drop-down menu. Next locate Account Security and click on “change”. Check the “Browse Facebook on a secure connection (https) whenever possible” checkbox. If you want to receive an email, a text message, or both when a new computer or mobile device logs into your account, check the appropriate boxes. Then click on the save button right underneath.

Under all that you can see the recent activity and if you see that the location of recent activity is from Kazakhstan, well, click on the end activity link on the right side (unless you ARE in Kazakhstan 🙂 ).

So there you have it. It’s not like you’re immune now to security risks related to Facebook, but these measures should raise the fence as far as security and privacy is concerned.