Popular social network Facebook has followed the footsteps of Google and Microsoft to implement HTTPS protocol as a security option. Facebook has also announced that it will add a layer of security with social authentication that involves friends' image identification to access account in case of any suspicious activity. Apart from making your access secure, ensure that you know everyone whom you've added as a friend else your Facebook account will be in trouble.
With Facebook being a craze among millions of people worldwide, it's also a sweet honey-pot for several hackers to launch phishing attacks, worms and social engineering methods to steal account information. But now, Facebook has announced that it will introduce new HTTPS connection for encrypted and secured access of the social network.
To access Facebook entirely over HTTPS connection, you need to enable the option in Account Security located in your Facebook Account Settings. At this moment, the option is opt-in because several other applications for Facebook are yet to support the HTTPS protocol.
While the rest of the applications get HTTPS protocol support, it's quite possible that hackers will try their best to steal your password. However, Facebook claims to have devised a solution that will restrain such hackers from accessing your account. With a new option called Social Authentication, Facebook asks users to identify his/her Facebook friends from the photos. That will usually happen if your Facebook account has been accessed from a totally different location. It might be a little annoying initially but it is for your own good.
However, in this case if the hacker is victim's friend or friend of friend then he/she can easily gain access to the Facebook account. That goes with a premise that the hacker knows/identifies victim's Facebook friends correctly.
To access Facebook entirely over HTTPS connection, you need to enable the option in Account Security located in your Facebook Account Settings. At this moment, the option is opt-in because several other applications for Facebook are yet to support the HTTPS protocol.
While the rest of the applications get HTTPS protocol support, it's quite possible that hackers will try their best to steal your password. However, Facebook claims to have devised a solution that will restrain such hackers from accessing your account. With a new option called Social Authentication, Facebook asks users to identify his/her Facebook friends from the photos. That will usually happen if your Facebook account has been accessed from a totally different location. It might be a little annoying initially but it is for your own good.
However, in this case if the hacker is victim's friend or friend of friend then he/she can easily gain access to the Facebook account. That goes with a premise that the hacker knows/identifies victim's Facebook friends correctly.
Google had made the HTTPS protocol default on January 12, 2010. Post that, a majority of Gmail users were happy to access the email services via a secured protocol. However, in late October 2010, a simple Firefox Extention - FireSheep was demonstrated to snoop around the Wi-Fi for stealing Twitter, Facebook and even Hotmail account credentials. Following that, Microsoft added more security to its email Service Hotmail with new HTTPS protocol via SSL. Now Facebook has taken up the HTTPS secured protocol route to ensure user's account security.
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