A Guide to Facebook Security

Protecting Your Facebook Account
Y
ou are the first line of  defense in protecting your account. You can take control of  your protection by using strong 
passwords, taking advantage of  the many advanced security settings that provide authentication as well as secure 
communications, and making sure you log out when you are done.
Using good passwords
Using a good password is something that you should do every place you visit on the Internet, not just Facebook. Creating a 
good password is fairly simple. You want it to be complex enough that it can’t be guessed, yet meaningful enough that you 
can actually remember it. 
Have a great password?
• Don’t use it  for ALL your  accounts.
• Don’t share it  with  friends.
• Change it  regularly.

• Consider  storing  it  in  a password  tool.
A good password has at least eight characters, one or more numbers, and at least one special character. Use non-words but 
associate them with a word. Imagine your pet’s name is Buddy, you live on State Street, you’re 15, and you like to stargaze 
at night. A good password for you would be  budstat15*. Or go for something humorous you can remember. One woman 
set her work password to remind her of  why she went to work,  4da$cash . 
Can’t remember that many details? Use a password tool to remember for you. Many browsers now include password vaults. 
If  yours doesn’t, consider a free tool like KeePass Password Safe ( http://keepass.info/ ). And just in case you still forget, be 
sure to add a security question and your mobile phone number in the ACCOUNT SETTINGS  of  your Facebook account.  
Logging out of Facebook
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. 
But it’s also important at home if  you share a computer. Just ask Nathan, a 16-year-old who left his Facebook account 
logged in on the family computer. During one soccer practice, his sister dumped his girlfriend for him by changing his 
Facebook relationship status to SINGLE . Since then, he makes it a point to always log out of  Facebook before leaving the 
house. And remember, if  you forget to log out of  an active session, you can always remotely close that session from the 
ACCOUNT SECURITY  section of  the ACCOUNT SETTINGS  page.