Rubina Yasmeen
Social media is a need of today. Your social media account is important for you. These accounts also used for business purposes. It is mandatory to keep them secure from hacking attempts.
There are few basic things that should be taken care of for security purposes. If you practice few things, you can keep your account safe.
The first thing first, the most important thing is your email address and selection of password.
Always keep private the email address that you used to make social media accounts. Check your Facebook privacy settings to confirm that the email associated with this account is set to Me only.
Your Facebook account password should be strong and familiar. Password should fulfill all requirements of a strong password.
Your Facebook account password and email address password should be different from each other. You must use a different password for each social media application. Most of the time users replace one or two characters in their password and use it at another social media application. If you want to keep a similar password, replace at least four characters. The best thing is that the whole password is different from any other password used.
Turn ON two-factor authentication in Facebook settings. The email you used to register your Facebook account should be configured on your mobile device. It will help you to receive notifications on your phone in case someone tried to sign in to your account. For password reset turn ON two-factor authentication and set notifications to receive text and email.
Your user ID is very important and keeping your account safe starts from here. When someone wants to crack or hack your account, your user ID is the first thing they need.
When you signup for some applications it gives you options that either you want to signup from a Facebook account or Google account. You can also find an option for signing up from your email account. You can make a dummy email address for this purpose, signup from your dummy email address. Avoid using your primary Facebook or Google account on third-party applications. The password of a dummy account should be different from the password of the main account.
When you signup from your Facebook or Google account some sites get token authentication. If you are using Facebook on your mobile phone, you can see some posts having links. When you click the link, it asks either you want to open this link on Facebook or google chrome. Mostly user opens those links in google chrome. This link leads you to a sign-in page. The user enters their email address and password to sign in and see their required post. Hackers can make such links that lead to their page and steal your sign-in information.
A best practice is, click on legitimate links only. Avoid opening links in the browser, opening links within the Facebook application is safe.
Browsers can have weak points which hackers can use against your safety. When you install some application, it asks for some permissions. User clicks okay for all and gives grant access to whatever it is asking for. Sometimes the user doesn’t notice and gives text messages access to third-party applications which never should be Okay for any app. Kindly turn off call listening and text reading permission in applications. If these applications are unnecessary delete them from your phone. Hackers read text messages from your phone with help of these applications. They can read verification codes sent to your phone and your account can get hacked.
Users should install only legitimate applications on their phones. Avoid installing applications from suspicious sources.
Hackers use social engineering techniques for getting access to someone’s account. Hackers use some fake accounts and try to get a click on some application’s link. Since users usually do not trust complete strangers, they get active on the target’s social media account and become familiar with the account holder.
Some websites provide link account options. User can link their social media accounts to these site’s user accounts. Users should make sure that the site is legitimate before connecting their accounts. It is good practice to avoid connecting social media accounts on other sites. If it is much beneficial go for it otherwise better do not connect. Sometimes marketing companies ask a user to share some links which can lead to making Facebook accounts vulnerable and can get compromised.
Free VPN installation from unreliable sources can also become a stealer of passwords. You can compromise the security of your Facebook account by installing a free VPN which get access to email, photos, and videos.
People used to memorize hundreds of passwords a few decades back. Every household had a phone number diary having phone numbers of all relatives and friends. Nowadays, it is a common practice to keep emails addresses and passwords in a text file on their devices. Passwords should not store on the cloud, google or Microsoft drives. If it is necessary to keep passwords written someplace; save them in some diary.
Always keep your computer’s antivirus updated. Never ever use crack version antivirus. Antivirus should be of some well-known reliable company. If buying is not budget-friendly then a trial version can be used.
Some browser provides password storage function. Sometimes extensions from unreliable sources try to steal stored passwords. The best place to store passwords is your mind. In case you must keep a record, a soft copy text form is not recommended.
In Facebook, settings keep checking login locations. Have a look at third-party applications and check what unnecessary access has been given. Remove applications that are not in use. Sometimes users grant permission to some game application and they use that token authentication for liking some other pages on Facebook without your knowledge.
For password recovery, you can add your trusted friends to the relevant list. Uncheck keep me login setting. Always delete any link, video, or picture from some stranger. If a sender is known still think before opening any link.
I hope, these precautions will help you in keeping your Facebook account secure. As an old adage says, precaution is the best cure.
