Facebook Ups Its Security

Never mind if what we saw in David Fincher’s “The Social Network” was true or false or somewhere in the gray muddle in between—these new updates on Facebook security makes up for a lot of the loathsome behavior that may or may not have taken place.

Recently, more old school Facebook fans have been disappointed by the network’s privacy issues and how not-so-private Facebook has become in the past year—as if we weren’t afraid for our security when the only security issues we had were human error: leaving public computers without signing off from our accounts first.  Even leaving personal computers unattended is risky given the level of mischief in present company when you excuse yourself for five seconds to visit the restroom.

Remote Sign-off and Latest Activity Peak

In the ongoing battle to win these fans back (not that they’ve gone anywhere because, for all our moping and moaning, we still have Facebook profiles, don’t we?), Zuckerberg has allowed for users to sign off remotely.  Moreover, you can now see your period of latest activity, or the period of latest activity by someone who shouldn’t have been on your account or computer.  This is nothing new for Gmail users but Facebook adds a function to reveal the location of the person rather than just his or her IP address as well as what device he or she was using to access your account.

One-time Passwords

Let’s say that you don’t know for sure if someone is going to get on the computer you last used so you don’t want to make a big stink of it but would really rather not have someone post ridiculous, creepy nonsense on your friends’ walls.  For this, Zuckerberg has created one-time passwords.  In such a circumstance, a Facebook user can text “otp” to the number 32665 from his or her mobile device (as long as it’s connected to his or her Facebook account).  Facebook will then send the user a temporary password.  This password can be used only once and will expire twenty minutes thereafter.  It’s that level of security that lets us feel warm and fuzzy inside.