Have You Locked Down Your Facebook Browsing Sessions Yet?

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Now that you have your Facebook privacy settings set, you now have to worry about unwanted guests from their hands on your browser session. With Facebook growing everyday, hackers are creating new ways to get your private data. They use your data to create havoc on your Facebook account and try and get more sensitive data from the site as well.

Hackers can get into a user account, in variety of ways, but the easiest way to do is through a public wifi hotspot. When a user logs into these hotspots, hackers can stumble around the open network using tools that sniff out unsecured connections. Once they find one, they can then use more tools to hijack your browsing session either to watch what you are doing or get your private data from you.  To help prevent hackers from getting into your system, the easiest ways to resolve this issue is by logging into sites that offer secured browsing sessions.

Facebooks and Secured Browsing

By default Facebook doesn’t have secured browsing turned on. But if you enter in HTTPS instead of HTTP you have secured browsing. But most users have never heard of this feature, including myself before today. I stumbled on to this option from the Facebook Blog while looking for something else. But, what most people who use this feature do not know is, that the secure login doesn’t always stay secure for some parts of the site. So for those that log into Facebook from public WiFi hotspots, this can still make them venerable to FireSheep attacks and attacks like it.

As of January 26th, Facebook announced that you can now by default login to facebook and that the entire has secured browsing. So all you have to do is go into your Facebook account settings and activate this feature.

How to Activate HTTPS for Your Facebook Account

To setup Secured Browsing (HTTPS) is easy, all you have to do is go into your account settings by clicking on the account settings from the top right corner account >>> Settings >>> Account Settings – Change link)

Once you click the change link, more options appear in this section. Check the box for Secure Browsing (https). Once you do that, you are secured. But is that all your really need to be secured? Keep reading to know about the other settings in this section.Another good setting to set is, the the “When a new computer or mobile device logs into to your account” This feature can come in handy if you think someone is trying to hack your account. You will know when an attempt is made if you have the send email and text message alerts set.  I will be leaving this feature on and I have selected to receive emails and text messages when someone logs into my account with an unknown computer. This is just a good idea, and its better to be prepared than to late. Below that feature, you can see every time you or some logs into your account and from where. This way, you can report any issues to Facebook and change your login information when you see an unwanted login.

Final Thoughts

After you set these features, every time you login to Facebook, by default Facebook will have an SSL-encrypted connection. This will keep unwanted Firesheep and other attacks from attacking you will connect to Facebook. I have heard some users may not have this feature, but its a few days since the release and most should already have it. If you haven’t gotten this feature yet. You should be getting it soon.

So far, this is one of my new favorite features of Facebook. With so many users on Facebook, hackers are creating ways to get at your information, secured browsing should have been added a long time ago. Now that its available, everyone should be browsing Facebook securely.

Image Source: Eternally Locked – DeviantArt