Tip of the Week: How to Leverage 2FA on Facebook

If you’re like its over 2.19 billion other active users, Facebook has quite a bit of your personal information stored in it, and the risks that this implies only grow if your business is also represented on the social network. If your account isn’t protected as much as it could be, you could find yourself at risk of identity theft or other crimes. This is why we recommend activating two-factor authentication on Facebook.

Two-factor authentication (or 2FA) has actually been available on Facebook for quite some time. However, before a few much-needed changes were made recently, there were a few drawbacks to using it. First and foremost, the user needed to provide Facebook with their phone number, which many people didn’t really want to do. This wasn’t helped by the fact that, just a few months before the changes were made, Facebook announced that their previous 2FA system had a bug. This bug caused any replies to mobile Facebook notifications from 362-65 (the 2FA number Facebook would use) to post on the user’s profile page.

Now, Facebook plays nice with applications like Google Authenticator and Duo Security, and has made the setup process much more utilizable for the average user. The timing on this change couldn’t be better, either, as quite a few two-factor authentication hacks have surfaced from the weaker SMS-based 2FA - meaning that your best move is to avoid using texts to enable your 2FA permissions. Admittedly, an extra layer of security isn’t a bad thing to have, but there’s evidence that hackers have the capability to snatch your 2FA codes to access your accounts.

Setting up 2FA for Facebook is pretty straightforward:

• Access Settings
• Navigate to Security and Login’
• Select Use two-factor authentication
• Choose the account you want to use as your authenticator.

2FA is just an extra piece of security to keep your information safe. To learn more about your options, call Horne & Benik today at (603) 499-4400.