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In this article we introduce you 5 Most Effective Steps to Secure Your Facebook Account against hackers
One of the hottest topics nowadays is hacking. A study shows that there is an attack every 39 seconds on average on the web and Facebook does not escape these attacks. According to the company, accounts are hacked 600,000 times per day when users log in. They record over a billion logins per day and 0.06% (600,000) of those logins are compromised (Jaccarino, 2011, 3).
Due to a security breach in 2018, Facebook was the victim of a large-scale attack that resulted in the hacking of 50 million accounts. According to their report:
Hackers exploited a vulnerability in Facebook’s code that affected ‘View As,’ a feature that allows people to see what their own profile looks like to someone else. This allowed them to steal Facebook access tokens, which they may have used to gain access to user accounts.
Facebook
Many Facebook users ignore the security features that can help protect their accounts from hackers. In this article, we will walk you through 5 Most Effective Steps that can help you effectively secure your account from hacker attacks and protect your personal information.
Before we continue, let’s talk about the reasons people hack Facebook.
What are the reasons why people hack Facebook accounts?
There are three main reasons why people hack Facebook:
1- Surveillance: perhaps a jealous husband or a jealous woman who wants to know to whom her partner sends SMS.
2- Sabotage: maybe an enemy, an adversary, or an ex-jealous who wants to have compromising information about you to tarnish your image or to blackmail you.
3- Information theft: people who want your personal information to sell to marketing companies or to access your bank details.
How do we know if our account has been compromised?
There are two main ways to find out if your account has been compromised:
1- Friends who tell you that they are receiving messages from you or posts on your Facebook wall with obscene and sometimes pornographic links.
2- If your password does not pass anymore: if you are sure of your password when you try to connect, but Facebook tells you that the password is incorrect, then you have been hacked. And if that’s the case, don’t hesitate to report it to Facebook on facebook.com/hacked.
And to find out if someone else had access to your Facebook account is too simple:
1- Go to the Facebook settings.
2- Then click on security and Login.
3- Then, a Tab will appear showing you the different locations and devices from which you have logged in. As well as the time you logged in.
If you notice something weird like login in from a city or country you’ve never been to, then you’ve been hacked.
Without wasting much of the time let us jump into the 5 Most Effective Steps to Secure Your Facebook Account against hackers
Step 1: Use strong passwords
About 90% of Facebook account hacks are the result of a simple password that hackers guess from your personal information or by using hacking tools.
Avoid using your date of birth, your pet’s name, your wife’s name, your husband’s name, your child, or even your favorite football team as a password. Or any name or word that can be found in a dictionary.
Also, avoid using a password with adjacent letters and numbers, a practice known as “password walking” (exp: 0123456789,12345, mylove, Confidence, michele123, etc.). Avoid using a password that consists of only letters or numbers, or the same as your username.
What are the characteristics of a strong password? A good password must contain:
1- At least 8 characters – the more characters the better
2- A mixture of upper and lower case letters.
3- A mix of letters and numbers
4- At least one special character. Example: ! @ #? ]
NB: do not use < or > in your password, as both can cause problems for the web browser.
To change your Facebook password:
1- Go to the Facebook settings.
2- Then click on security and Login.
3- Go to the Login section or tab and click on change password.
4- Enter your current password and the new one.
Change your passwords regularly as you change your sheets, that must be too saying, right? But it depends on who you are I change my sheets once a month some change once every two, three or four months and some once a week. In any case take care of your password as you do with your underwear always clean and hide.
Step 2: Choose Facebook friends to contact if you’re locked out or can’t access your account.
How it works ?
In case you cannot access your account, or it has been hacked, you can ask Facebook to send you a special recovery code via your trusted friends, then you can use it to access your account.
How to choose your trusted contacts?
1- Go to the Facebook settings.
2- Then click on security and Login.
3- Scroll down to the Setting Up Extra Security section then click on Choose 3 to 5 friends to contact if you get locked out
4- Click on Choose friends .
5- Enter the names of three or five trusted friends.
So if you are unable to access your account, you can ask these friends to help you by following the instructions on facebook:
Go to facebook.com on a computer, then click Forgot Account Information? On the login page.
If prompted, locate your account by entering your email address, phone number, username, or full name, then click Search.
View the list of email addresses associated with your account. If you no longer have access to any of them, click on Do you no longer have access to these?
Enter a new email address or phone number that you are sure you have access to, and click Continue.
Click Show My Trusted Contacts and enter the full name of one of them.
You will then access a set of instructions including a special link. This link contains a recovery code that only your trusted contacts can access.
To get the recovery code from your trusted contacts:
Send the link to your friend and ask them to open it. Its link will contain a connection code. Ask him to give you the login code. Use the recovery codes provided by your trusted contacts to access your account.
Step 3: Use two-factor authentication.
It can sometimes be embarrassing. But it is really an effective way to prevent hackers from hacking your Facebook account.
How it works ?
Two-Factor Authentication is a security feature that helps protect your Facebook account in addition to your password. If you’re setting up two-factor authentication, you’ll be asked to enter a special login code or confirm your login attempt each time someone tries to access your account from a browser or a mobile device that Facebook does not recognize. You can also receive alerts when someone tries to log in from an unknown browser or mobile device.
Facebook
To use two-factor authentication:
1- Go to the Facebook settings.
2- Then click on security and Login.
3- Scroll down to two-factor authentication section tab.
4- Click on Use two-factor authentication
5- Choose the text message method and click on next.
6- Then simply enter your phone number.
Step 4: Activate your Facebook connection alert.
You can improve the security of your Facebook account by receiving an alert when someone tries to log in from a device or web browser that Facebook does not recognize. These alerts will tell you which device tried to connect and where it is located.
1- Go to the Facebook settings.
2- Then click on security and Login.
3- Scroll down over Setting Up Extra Security tab section and click on Get alerts about unrecognized logins.
4- Choose where you want to receive your alerts, for example from your email account or with a Facebook notification from a recognized device.
5- Click on save changes.
Step 5: Delete unused applications that you have connected to via Facebook.
This is the list of apps and websites you have logged into using Facebook. They may receive the information you have chosen to share with them. Expired and deleted apps can still access information that was previously shared with them, but cannot receive other non-public information.
Sometimes we connect to a third party website using our Facebook account. Another sneaky way for hackers to access your account is through these apps.
If you have already connected to a third-party website and no longer need that website, you can remove it from your list of Facebook applications.
How it works?
1- Go to the Facebook settings.
2- Scroll down and click on applications and websites.
3- Go to the tab that has opened and click on expired.
4- In case you have ever logged into any website or app with your Facebook account, you will see it listed.
5- Delete each application that you no longer need.
Conclusion
Now that you know how to protect your Facebook account, it’s time for you to share it with your friends, because if your account is secure and theirs is not secure, your personal information can still be exposed to hackers. Remember, if your friend can be hacked, your private messages with them can be exposed. So, keep your account safe and help your friends do the same.
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