Welcome Guest. | Log In | Register | Membership Benefits

Product Watch: Facebook Adds New Anti-Hacking Protections

Security feature blocks suspicious logins

May 14, 2010 | 03:15 PM | 

By Kelly Jackson Higgins

Facebook yesterday added new security features to help protect user accounts from unauthorized access. But the login notification and blocking protections thus far have been overshadowed by a growing wave of discontent over Facebook's new "instant personalization" features that have led to unprecedented scrutiny by regulators and privacy advocates, as well as campaigns urging users to delete their accounts.

The social network has been under fire since it instituted it instituted its "social plug-ins" -- backlash that reportedly led to a closed door, all-hands-on-deck meeting at the company yesterday to discuss its privacy policies.

Meantime, Facebook's new security features may not directly address the privacy controversy, but they do offer some controls for protecting user accounts from hacking. The login notification feature lets users approve devices they use to log into their Facebook account and receive notifications when their account is accessed from a non-approved device. It now appears under the Account Settings page, under "Account Security."

"For example, you can save your home computer, your school or work computer, and your mobile phone. Once you've done this, whenever someone logs in to your account from a device not on this list, we'll ask the person to name the device," blogged Facebook's Lev Popov, a software engineer on Facebook's site integrity team. "We'll also send you an immediate email notification - and if you want, a text message - so that you're always up to speed on how your account is being accessed. This notification will provide steps on how to reset your password and remove the device, so you can quickly secure your account if it's being accessed from a device you don't recognize."

The second new feature blocks suspicious logins before they get through. "When we see that someone is trying to access your account from an unusual device, we'll ask the person to answer an additional verification question to prove his or her identity as the real account owner. For example, we might ask the person to enter a birth date, identify a friend in a photo or answer a security question if you've previously provided one," Popov said in his blog post.

Have a comment on this story? Please click "Discuss" below. If you'd like to contact Dark Reading's editors directly, send us a message.



Currently we allow the following HTML tags in comments:

Single tags

These tags can be used alone and don't need an ending tag.

<br> Defines a single line break

<hr> Defines a horizontal line

Matching tags

These require an ending tag - e.g. <i>italic text</i>

<a> Defines an anchor

<b> Defines bold text

<big> Defines big text

<blockquote> Defines a long quotation

<caption> Defines a table caption

<cite> Defines a citation

<code> Defines computer code text

<em> Defines emphasized text

<fieldset> Defines a border around elements in a form

<h1> This is heading 1

<h2> This is heading 2

<h3> This is heading 3

<h4> This is heading 4

<h5> This is heading 5

<h6> This is heading 6

<i> Defines italic text

<p> Defines a paragraph

<pre> Defines preformatted text

<q> Defines a short quotation

<samp> Defines sample computer code text

<small> Defines small text

<span> Defines a section in a document

<s> Defines strikethrough text

<strike> Defines strikethrough text

<strong> Defines strong text

<sub> Defines subscripted text

<sup> Defines superscripted text

<u> Defines underlined text

Dark Reading encourages readers to engage in spirited, healthy debate, including taking us to task. However, Dark Reading moderates all comments posted to our site, and reserves the right to modify or remove any content that it determines to be derogatory, offensive, inflammatory, vulgar, irrelevant/off-topic, racist or obvious marketing/SPAM. Dark Reading further reserves the right to disable the profile of any commenter participating in said activities.

Disqus Tips To upload an avatar photo, first complete your Disqus profile. | View the list of supported HTML tags you can use to style comments. | Please read our commenting policy.
Subscribe to RSS



Security Services Reports

report Using Service Providers To Manage DDoS Threats
When it comes to the battle against distributed denial-of-service attacks, you are not alone. With the increasing use of third-party service providers, your organization likely has a huge arsenal of bandwidth, technology and know-how at its disposal. The challenge is to effectively marshal those resources among your providers and integrate them with your own security measures into a strategic and comprehensive DDoS protection plan.

report Hosted Web Security Services: Block Malware Before Your Border
Security service providers are now delivering a wide range of packaged offerings, including Web content filtering, anti-malware, data leak prevention, and many other capabilities. How can your organization take advantage of these Web security services, and how can you choose the right provider? This Dark Reading Tech Center report offers a look at these services and some recommendations on how best to implement them.

report You've Got (Secure) Mail: Using Service Providers to Boost Protection
The SaaS market is still in its infancy, but hosted e-mail security firms are leading the way, thanks to ease of implementation and many obvious benefits. Still, these services are not without risks. In this Dark Reading Tech Center report, we'll discuss how to determine what mix of in-house and hosted email security makes sense for your organization.

Other reports from the Security Services Tech Center:

Related Content

Establishing a Formal Cyber Intelligence Capability
Organizations are realizing that advanced intelligence capabilities consistently deliver substantial cost savings - with proactive insights on true threats, the intelligence to avoid false alarms, and the system and application availability required to preserve revenues and customer loyalty. But achieving these benefits requires organizations to establish a formal cyber intelligence capability. Read this whitepaper to learn about a proven, repeatable process with clearly established steps for setting up an in-house cyber security intelligence operation.

DDoS Mitigation: Best Practices for a Rapidly Changing Threat Landscape
Although DDoS attacks have become a mainstay of hackers' arsenals, their profile has changed considerably in the past year, making them an even greater threat to companies that conduct business online. DDoS attacks are larger, stealthier, more targeted, and more sophisticated than ever. Get best practices to enable your organization to keep pace with DDoS attacks while minimizing impact on business operations.

2012 Cyber Crime Threats and Trends
Get the highlights of 2011 cyber security trends and how those trends and others might unfold in 2012. This report is a strategic complement to daily tactical intelligence reports and provides IT security and business operations with actionable and relevant decision support.

Using Hybrid Routing to Optimize DNS Resolution Performance and Reliability
To create a satisfactory end user experience, enterprises must ensure that DNS resolution is fast and reliable. Learn more about how using a hybrid routing solution can greatly maximize performance while minimizing latency-and address your business' specific needs along the way.

A Cost Analysis of Approaches To DDoS Protection.
All organizations with an online presence or dependence on Internet-based systems need to fortify their defenses against DDoS attacks. DDoS can cost an organization in tangible losses and in more subtle ways. Read this whitepaper for a deeper perspective on the cost benefits of a dedicated, cloud-based DDoS service over an in-house hardware solution or over-provisioning through your ISP.




Featured Webcasts
Featured Whitepapers
Featured Reports