A review of Facebook's security guide for teens, parents, teachers

As a parent who often acts like a teenager, I have a few thoughts after reading Facebook's new safety guide for teens, parents and teachers.

First, I think Facebook deserves credit for raising the awareness bar. I've often wondered if Facebook cared. This demonstrates that it does. So let's have a look at this .pdf file [1], shall we?

There's a lot of very basic stuff in there that the smarter among us already know. Of course, being smart and understanding the advice doesn't mean we'll follow it.

There are 10 security tips that parents and kids should tack on a wall:

--Only Friend people you know.
--Create a good password and use it only for Facebook.
--Don’t share your password.
--Change your password on a regular basis.??
--Share your personal information only with people and companies that need it.
--Log into Facebook only ONCE each session. If it looks like Facebook is asking you to log in a second time, skip the links and
directly type www.facebook.com into your browser address bar.
--Use a one-time password when using someone else’s computer.
--Log out of Facebook after using someone else’s computer.
--Use secure browsing whenever possible.
--Only download Apps from sites you trust.
--Keep your anti-virus software updated.
--Keep your browser and other applications up to date.
--Don’t paste script (code) in your browser address bar.
--Use browser add-ons like Web of Trust and Firefox’s NoScript to keep your account from being hijacked.
--Beware of “goofy” posts from anyone—even Friends. If it looks like something your Friend wouldn’t post, don’t click on it.
--Scammers might hack your Friends’ accounts and send links from their accounts. Beware of enticing links coming from your Friends.

There's a page on imposter profiles and what to do if you find one in your name. There's advice on how to recover a hacked Facebook account. There are also definitions for such things as "protocol" and "phishing."

The coolest part of the document, in my opinion, is that it goes into depth on the benefits of stronger authentication. I expected to see the usual advice about making strong passwords, but they take it further by pointing out stronger methods like single-sign on.

It walks users through all of Facebook's security settings and has a detailed section on click-jacking.

One of the simplest pieces of advice is to log out of your Facebook account whenever you are not using it.

Logging out of Facebook when you’re not using it is a simple and effective way to protect your account. Many people think that if they close the web page or exit the browser that also logs them out of Facebook. It doesn’t. The next person who goes to Facebook.com on that computer will find themselves already logged in—to your account. Logging out is crucial when you’re accessing Facebook away from home.

A lot of users don't realize this, and that's why you see so much spam coming from legitimate accounts.

All in all, I think this is a helpful document. But it won't help anyone unless parents and teachers take an active role in printing out copies and making them easily available to as many kids as possible.

With a new school year starting, this will be something worth putting in the take-home folders.

--Bill Brenner

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