Even if the Facebook account cannot be as precious as that of the bank account, for those who often use it to share photos and chat, it is really important to keep it safe, especially for the data that the personal profile contains. Facebook accounts are a succulent and greedy prey for hackers and virus distributors, not only for the many information they may contain and for the fact that they can be used to spread spam, malware or advertising, but above all because it is an environment easy to compromise since there are lots of very naive people ready to click whatever appears on their page.
For these reasons Facebook provides various tools to secure access to the account and to protect each user's Facebook profile .
Without getting lost in the many security and privacy settings, we see here the 5 fundamental Facebook account protection options that should configure and activate all subscribers to protect the profile from external access or intrusion attempts.
Then open the profile settings from the Facebook site or from the application (on the site, press the down arrow located at the top right) and click on the " protection " section to find these 5 options to modify or activate .
READ ALSO: How can you hack a Facebook account
1) Access notices
This option is very important to use to be notified via email about any suspicious logins.
Access is suspicious if it comes from a country far from ours or even from an unusual location, such as a computer other than the usual one.
Then activate the notifications for access from new devices and make sure that this notification can be received via email, so that you can also intervene in case of theft of the account.
NOTE: Still in the Facebook security settings, you can control the devices from which you have logged in to end the sessions left open on devices not owned by us.
2) Approval of accesses
Receiving the notice for accesses from new devices is of no use alone, without also activating the approval of accesses to Facebook.
This is perhaps the most powerful option to guarantee account protection by hackers or intruders because with this option active, every time you log in from a web browser or from a PC other than the one usually used, you will be asked one more code.
This second code which is requested in addition to the password, varies at all times and is sent to the cell phone number of the account owner.
Optionally, you can also use a code generator (the Facebook app itself can work as a code generator) or one of the codes provided in case you don't have a phone.
To know how to use this protection and all its options, refer to the guide to enable Facebook login with security code and access approval.
3) Trusted contacts
In case you have problems accessing Facebook because the password has been forgotten or because the account has been hacked, you can ask for help from some trusted friends to recover the account.
Three trusted Facebook friends, who also know each other in real life, must be indicated to contact in case of login problems.
4) Contact heir
The forecast for the next 10 or 20 years is that of a real virtual cemetery of deceased people who can leave their Facebook profile abandoned.
To avoid this sad abandonment, Facebook provides for the indication of a contact heir, that is a very close person who will be able to access the dead person's account and manage it to change the profile image and write new updates.
In this case the account becomes commemorative .
After activating this option, it is also possible to decide whether the heir contact has the possibility to download all the data that has been published and written on Facebook by the deceased person to keep them.
Alternatively, in the same option, you can request the deletion of the account.
Instead of indicating an heir contact, Facebook will be told to cancel our account when we are dead and leave the social network forever.
In the event of the death of one of our relatives or friends, to request that his account become commemorative or be removed, Facebook must be notified.
5) Block invitations and apps
Most of the dangers to a Facebook account lie in the Facebook internal applications that can spread and infect many users before they are removed.
These apps are not computer viruses, but they spread links automatically by referring to infected, adult or pure spam web pages.
The risk is also to see the account banned and points for violation of Facebook rules due to the infected app.
In this regard, I refer to two articles in which I have spoken extensively about these problems:
- Facebook virus applications and fake or fake notifications to ignore and avoid
- How Facebook is used to infect users' PCs with malware
In general, if you don't know the app or game you are invited to by a friend, you should always refuse.
Even better, invitations to applications are worth blocking.
In another article, all the options to block invitations on Facebook .
These are the 5 most important options to protect Facebook and secure your profile.
For a complete overview, refer to the Facebook security settings guide .
