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Thursday, March 31, 2011

How To Check If Someone Else Is Accessing Your Facebook Account

8 here, 8 there) to regain control of your Facebook privacy, taught you how to secure your settings, given you tips to protect your privacy, introduced you to apps like PrivacyDefender, and shown you how to tweak your Facebook Places security settings. And after all that, we finally broke down and wrote an Unofficial Facebook Privacy Guide.
So what’s the problem now? Nothing, technically. In fact, Facebook has recently given us a way to see if someone else has been accessing our Facebook accounts (without our permission). Is that something you’d be interested in? Follow me.

What Does This Mean For Me?

Have you ever suspected that someone else was logging into your Facebook account? It’s not a good feeling, mostly because it would drive you crazy if you were unable to prove it. Whether you have an easy password to guess (like the word “password”) or you accidentally left your login information saved on a public computer somewhere, it would be reassuring to be able to check whether or not anyone has been signing in under your name.
Sure, you could always change your password, but lets face it, you aren’t going to do that unless you absolutely have to – unless your password really is the word “password”, in which you should change it immediately (I’m serious). I don’t blame you, but there has to be another way of uncovering suspicious activity on your account.
The feature I’m about to show you is a nice little security setting built into Facebook that will help you quickly detect if anybody else has been secretly logging into and using your Facebook account.

Where Are These Security Features?

someone else accessing my facebook accountTo get to the security settings I’ve been alluding to, log into your Facebook account and click on Account at the top right of the page. When the drop-down box appears, click on Account Settings.
There’s a good chance you know exactly where I’m taking you, but your settings should look a little different this time since the last time you’ve visited.
On your My Account page, scroll down to where it says Account Security and click the change link.
Now you should see a list of all computers (and mobile devices) that have logged into your Facebook account, their location, and when this happened. Rather than an IP address, it displays the approximate geographic location of the device, which is based on the device’s IP.
If you come across an unknown or suspicious device in your list, just click “end activity” on the device and you will automatically be logged out of that machine.
someone else accessing my facebook account
Also, if you would like to add an extra layer of protection on your account, you can enable email/SMS alerts for when someone else tries to log into your account from a previously unknown computer or mobile phone. Features like one-time passwords and secure browsing using the HTTPS protocol are also at your disposal.
Would you like to see all of these advanced security features in action? Check out this YouTube video if you’re seeking further explanation:

Conclusion

I think this is a pretty solid move by Facebook. If you didn’t know these security features were there you may be pleased to find the added level of security that’s there for you to enable. One interesting aspect of this is what you do if you confirm a suspicious machine has been logging into your account and you think it’s someone you know? I’ll leave the creativity up to you, but you could theoretically let it slide, enable alerts, and then catch them in the act the next time it happens. Or something like that.
What do you think of Facebook’s privacy features?

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