After a string of controversies over promiscuous data sharing and account takeovers, social networking giant, Facebook, has released a 13 page guide for users who want to secure their Facebook account. Among other things, the 700 million strong social network is warning its users to only “Friend” people they know.
The document titled, “Own Your Space” is an official guide to Facebook security. In it, the company guides users not only on securing their Facebook accounts, but also on computer security, as a whole.
“Own Your Space” covers the bases pretty well. It touches on all the staples of network security best practices: from password management to recognizing various types of phishing scams. For security newbies, the guide offers explanations of terms like “malware” and “phishing scams,” as well as more obscure fare like “gaming,” “clickjacking” and “malicious script scams.”
[Read more of Threatpost’s coverage of Facebook security here. ]
Among the numerous helpful tips is guidance on using advanced security settings, like one-time passwords and secure browsing, how to recover an account that has been hijacked, and Facebook’s social authentication technology, to name a few.
The company that put the word “friending” on the map (if not in the dictionary, yet) also advises its users to make sure they know all their friends, and not just accepting any and every friend request that comes your way – somewhat counter intuitive advice for a company whose business model appears to be to connect everybody to everybody else.
Facebook has seen no shortage of security scandals in recent years – not all specific to its platform. The company was one of a number of Web based services exposed by the FireSheep browser plug-in, which revealed the company’s reliance on insecure HTTP sessions. Facebook implemented a secure browsing feature in January to address the FireSheep issue. Recent studies have shown how scams continue to spread far and wide over the company’s sprawling user base, with spammy links showing up on the walls of millions of users in a matter of days.
