With over 300 million users and hundreds of thousands joining daily Facebook has become one of the most popular websites on the web and only second to Google, the Web search powerhouse. With so many users this site has become one of the primary targets for hackers and malicious individuals to try to get access to personal information in order to take over other people's accounts.
As you very well know, most of us keep sensitive information in our computers, from tax and credit card information all the way to e-mails and passwords that we use in order to access social networking websites. If you think that having your Facebook e-mail and password compromise is not that big of a deal just think about what would happen if someone got a hold of your account information and started insulting all of your friends or even worse, posting inappropriate material using your name. Could you imagine the face and the reaction of your family and coworkers after they see something inappropriate being posted from your account? It goes without saying that most people's reputations would be ruined after something like that.
In order to prevent your Facebook account information from being compromised is important for you to keep in mind the following steps:
Use a strong password
Many Internet security companies have published interesting pieces regarding just how common most people's passwords really are, some people use a sequence of numbers from 1 to 9 while others simply use the word "password" as their password. The problem here is that using such information becomes a pattern which can be exploited by malicious people in order to get access to your Facebook account so using a password which combines both numbers and alphanumeric characters is of the utmost importance.
Use a password manager
If you use Firefox, Google chrome, Safari or any other browser than it is helpful to know that each and every one of these tools count with a password manager which is just a simple utility that you can use to store your passwords and login information. However, not many people feel completely safe by storing all this information within a browser because as we all know crashes do happen so in order to prevent data loss the best approach is to use a program such as "Last Pass" which works on both Windows and Mac or "Roboform" for Windows users only.
Both of these programs will allow you to choose whether to just install an add-on in your browser or run both an add-on along with the USB key which is where all your information will be stored. Both of these programs offered the ability to backup your data on the service provider's servers were only you have access to all the backed up information should you ever need it.
Learn how to recognize phishing scams
It is very unlikely for Facebook to contact you through e-mail in order to request personal information, if you ever come across such e-mail make sure that you move your mouse over the links in order to see whether or not the domain name is actually legit and even if it is don't just fall for it because many links and e-mail addresses can be spoofed nowadays.
A very clever idea which is being used in order to steal other people's information is to send spam e-mails to a large base of people which asks them whether or not they want to know if their personal information has been compromised on the web. Since most people are curious by nature they click through and land on a page that asks them to input their credit card or account information in order to determine if the information being input has previously been stolen but guess what? By putting your information on such websites and trying to verify whether or not your info has been compromised you are actually compromising your information! So think twice before you click on any e-mail link and start filling out forms.