Facebook rolls out new security features

If you have wondered why you have lately been asked to register the computer from which you access your Facebook account, wonder no more! Facebook has announced new tools and systems designed to improve security, and the registering feature was one of them.

It aims to notify you if and when your account has been accessed from a device you haven’t approved. To try it out, you must go to your Account Settings page and “change” your Account Security:

Facebook advises you to save your home and work (school) computer and your mobile phone – in short, all the devices you regularly access your account from.

When you receive an email or SMS that lets you know that your account has been accessed by a new device, you are also given instructions on what to do if the login was unauthorized:

The second security-related change is the system that blocks suspicious logins. “When we see that someone is trying to access your account from an unusual device, we’ll ask the person to answer an additional verification question to prove his or her identity as the real account owner. For example, we might ask the person to enter a birth date, identify a friend in a photo or answer a security question if you’ve previously provided one. These questions are designed to be easy for you, and hard for a bad guy, and we’ve already seen some great results,” says in the post.

For those who expect this to be an annoying process, Facebook informs: “You won’t go through this flow often. We’ll only ask you to prove your identity on the rare occasion that we notice something different. If you’re ever asked to go through this flow, that’s just Facebook’s site integrity team saying “Hi” and that we’re here to help you protect your account.”