Do largely in response to the recent Firesheep “side jacking” add-on to Firefox, that made hacking someones Facebook, Twitter and other Social Media and WWW connections, a point and click technology, Facebook is stepping up its security. As of Friday, January 26, 2011 Facebook has added the option for secure (https) connections. So for all you mobile/coffee shop social media types, make sure you turn it on! Turning on the secure connection will connect you to your Facebook account the same way you would connect to your bank, through a secure connection. You will get the familiar little yellow lock signifying a secure connection. This means that the connectio0n to Facebook will be encrypted, pretty much disabling Firesheep and other “ease droppers” who may be lurking on the public network.
The secure connection option is turned “OFF” by default, you must turn it on yourself, and I strongly recommend that you do so, here is how.
While on the Facebook web site click on “Account” in the upper right hand corner of the page. Then click on “Account Settings” in the drop down menu. Once on the Account settings page scroll down until you see “Account Security”. Click on Account Security and check the box for; Browse Facebook on a secure connection (https) whenever possible. Then click the save button.
Notice the option said “whenever possible”. There are still some third party apps (games/quizzes) that do not work under https, so they will be transmitted in plain text.
Kudos to Facebook for a step in the right direction. You can read more about it on Facebook’s blog.
