Keeping a Low Profile on Facebook

Those logging onto Facebook will soon be able to encrypt their usage under newly announced security features that will be rolled out over the next few weeks.

The goal is to keep unwelcome eavesdroppers—including identity thieves and account impersonators—from grabbing personal information as it is sent to and from Facebook. Users already log in through a secure HTTPS connection, as they do when using online banking and other secure sites, but soon they will be able to continue using that secure connection throughout the time they are using the site, Facebook said in an announcement on its blog. The feature can be turned on by changing your account settings.

The site will also implement a new authorization feature when there are indications that suspicious activity has been detected on your account. Users will have to verify their identity with a new “social authentication,” test in which they’ll be shown photos of their Facebook friends and asked to name them.

“Hackers halfway across the world might know your password, but they don't know who your friends are,” the Facebook blog says.

There’s one catch: Since encrypted pages take longer to load, it will take extra time to use Facebook while using HTTPS.

The upgraded security will thwart account hijacking or identity theft through Firesheep and other snooping tools that rely on picking up data sent to and from Facebook after users log in, points out the Washington Post.

Facebook’s new security measure announcement comes a day after someone apparently hacked into company’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg own Facebook fan page, which is “liked” by 2.8 million users of the site.

Whomever posted the message, which started out by saying “Let the hacking begin,” indicated that Facebook should become a “social business,” and linked to a Wikipedia page that defined such a business as one with “positive social objectives,” in which investors cannot take “profits out of the enterprise as dividends,” MSNBC reported. The page was quickly pulled.

Maybe it was a would-be investor, irate to learn that they couldn’t break through Goldman Sach’s gates to invest in Facebook?

One thing’s for sure: With the Federal Trade Commission’s push for online privacy, prompting companies such as Mozilla and Google to develop new browser features, being able to go online without unwanted observers knowing about it is becoming the Holy Grail for tech companies.

---

Get more business intelligence from Portfolio.com:

• Holding On to Top Talent: As companies start hiring again, small businesses risk losing top talent to bigger firms. Tips on how they can keep their best workers and help them grow.
• A Fling With eBooks: Kindles and Nooks now allow readers to share some titles for a brief time—an opportunity that 29-year-old George Burke fell in love with.
• Mind the Compensation Gap: Income inequality is a topic of interest at the World Economic Forum. It may not get very far among the wealthy businesspeople gathered in Davos. But it did get us wondering just how big of a gap there is between a U.S. CEO and an average worker. It's certainly big, but not as big as it has been.

---

Teresa Novellino writes for Portfolio.com