Facebook is social networking platform developed in 2004. It becomes important in today’s society in each and every walk and matters of life. According to AppAppeal website in April 2011, it is the most popular social networking site in Mexico, Indonesia, Turkey, Argentina, Egypt, Malaysia, Philippines, Venezuela, Colombia, Nigeria and Chile. Comscore press mentioned in their report that 50.8% Asian people visited social networking sites in 2010 and facebook is the top most visited site among many others. There is no doubt in tremendous increase of facebook social site but there also exists some very serious security issues which need to be resolved in any way.

Common issues are:

• Malware
• Hacking accounts
• Money transfer scams
• Clickjacking (clicking button automatically downloads malicious programs)
• Availability of third party applications
• Allow everyone to write their applications and made them public

Here are some guidelines to protect your facebook account from malicious programs:

• First of all make your connection “https” instead of “http” by checking box in security settings under account security tab.

• Make use of two step authentication with the help of “Login Approvals”. This feature provides security authentication code that is required for login along with password.

• If your friend or anyone wants you to transfer money because he/she is in great trouble, don’t send money and report account to security help centre here. You can also get details of new attacks on facebook from Facecrooks.com time to time. Also check the email id of sender by double clicking either it is from facebookemail.com, if it is not then it is not from authentic source.

• If your account has been hacked and spam messages are being sent from your side unknowingly, you can go here to re-secure your account by following step by step procedure.

• You can also enable “Login Notifications” which alerts you whenever someone else tries to login your account from some other machine. It will helpful to you when you always use same computer and internet connection to login into facebook account. To enable this feature, go to account settings > account security > Login notification

• There is also a facebook one time password service which can provide password that is used only once for login. For this you will have to activate your phone on facebook to receive passwords under Mobile tab in account settings

• Before downloading any application you must have to be checking it on internet for reviews and ratings and if it has good reviews then install it otherwise not.

I hope these guidelines will help you to maintain secure and trusted environment on facebook.Stay safe!

By: Ume Ghazia

Image Credit: blog.solutionary.com