New Facebook Security Tool for Facebook Users

We all know that Facebook and most, if not all online accounts that require a password will provide that “Forgot your Password?” option just in case you forget your password.  You simply click on it, and it will send you a link to your registered email address to reset your password .  You reset your password and regain total access. While it might be great and convenient to have to reset your password in such an easy way, what happens if an attacker hacks your email?  All of a sudden that’s not great after all.  The hacker can now reset passwords to many of your accounts. 

To improve account security with delegated recovery, Facebook announced support for U2F Security Keys.  This will help keep accounts secure with a second-factor authentication feature called login approvals.  Brad Hill, a Security Engineer for the social media company said, “This process needs to be easy, secure, and respectful of your privacy.”  The security tool is being released with GitHub.  The purpose of that is so Facebook can get feedback from the security community. To use the new security tool, we will have to wait for Facebook to implement it.

 

For now, you can consider strengthening your passwords. Taking advantage of third-party services like LastPass, that can help safeguard sensitive passwords is another great idea.  Remember not to store your list of passwords on your computer in plain text.