Communicating over the internet, although very beneficial, has its own share of risks. Most recently, Facebook was the victim of a breach that affected an estimated 50 million users. This catastrophe has brought forward the urgency and the need to ensure that your account is protected.
An official statement released by Facebook stated that the hackers took advantage of the ‘View as” feature. This feature which allows users to view their profile as someone else, to see what content is shared. It enabled them to gain access into Facebook and take over control of people’s accounts coming into contact with personal information. This article is geared towards helping you ensure that your account is safe.
How do you know if you’ve been impacted?
Before we highlight how to enhance the security around your account, it is crucial to identify if you are among the 50 million people who were affected by the breach. Facebook logged out all the 50 million accounts and gave out a statement that the affected accounts would receive a message on their newsfeed once they logged back in giving details of what had happened during the breach.
It doesn’t mean that if you found your account logged out you were impacted by the breach, however. They also logged out the accounts of all the users who had used the “view as” feature as it made them more exposed to the risk. These accounts did not, however, have a message on their newsfeed as they had not been affected but were logged out just as a security precaution.
What can I do to improve my Facebook account security?
Online security experts have come out to advise people on how they can improve the security of their accounts after the recent breach. They recommend all users; whether affected by the breach or not, to change their passwords and ensure that the passwords are strong enough.
They also advised against using your Facebook account to access multiple social media accounts and applications. This linking should be removed as it's a channel that hackers use to access vital information. Facebook users should also ensure that they don’t use the same password to log into their account and the other social media accounts.
If you use Facebook on multiple devices, check to see if you were logged out on all of them. This can be achieved by going to the “Security and Login” section in your Facebook account. Click on “see more” in the “Where you’re logged in” section. This will allow you to log yourself out of all the devices that have accessed your account.
Using two-factor authentication makes use of a unique code and password that can help enhance account security.
