Facebook today announced two new security features, which will be rolled out to the company’s 800 million active users in the coming weeks: Trusted Friends and App Passwords. The company also put together a massive infographic (embedded below) to illustrate “the full range of features that we have in place to keep people safe and secure on Facebook—and how they work.”
Trusted Friends will let you select three to five trusted friends who can help you if you ever have issues accessing your account. Facebook will send codes to the friends you have selected. If you are ever locked out of your account (you forget your password and can’t access your e-mail account), your friends can pass one of these codes on to you in order to let you log back into your account.
App Passwords will let you set a unique password for some third-party apps. Tons of apps already let you use your existing Facebook credentials but in some cases you may want to have a unique password for a given app. To access the feature, you will have to go to Account Settings, the Security tab, and then the App Passwords section. You will have the option to generate a password that you won’t need to remember, just enter it along with your e-mail when logging into an app.
Over the past few years, Facebook has introduced a number of new security tools and developed several back-end systems to help keep its users and their data secure. As part of National Cyber Security Awareness Month, Facebook is working with others in the community to help educate those online about techniques and tools for securing your devices and networks. To better illustrate the full range of features Facebook now offers, the company has released the following infographic (click for the full size).
There are really only three new pieces of information in this infographic:
- Facebook will roadblock 250-600,000 accounts on any given day to help protect the integrity of the site.
- Facebook scans 2 trillion link clicks per day.
- Facebook blocks 210 million malicious actions per day containing malicious links (out of a scanned 25 billion actions daily).
“Security and safety are at the core of Facebook,” a Facebook spokesperson said in a statement. “We have entire teams dedicating their time to building tools that give people even more control over their account and specifically the way they access their information. In fact, many of our most talented engineers are working exclusively on creating a secure environment on Facebook. We are adapting and responding to new threats every day and will continue to bring the people that use our site new ways to protect themselves. Be on the lookout for more announcements throughout the rest of this year, and remember to stay vigilant while online and remind others to do the same.”
See also:
- Three weeks later, Facebook has paid $40,000 in security bug bounties
- Facebook launches security bug bounty program
- Security experts have mixed feelings about Facebook’s privacy revamp
- Facebook testing two new mobile security features
- Facebook improves safety, security tools; experts not impressed
- Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg: spamming apps are lame
