Most of us have a Facebook account, and chances are, your mom does too. Furthermore, I’m willing to bet neither of you have login alerts or approvals set on your account, and you probably don’t know what they are or why they’re important. Hopefully, by the end of this article, we’ll fix that for both of you.
We’ve talked about Two-Factor Authentications in the past (here’s the link), and in a nutshell, it’s requiring two steps to log into your account, for extra security (requiring you to know your password and requiring you to type in a code from your cell phone). It’s super important to enable for multiple reasons, but mainly because most of us use the same password at multiple websites. Every few weeks we’re hearing about another website security breach where usernames and passwords are compromised. What if that website that was hacked uses your same username and password as your Facebook site? Take it one step further and consider the many times you sign up for a new account online and instead of requiring you to create a whole new account, you can just “sign in with my Facebook account” (which essentially makes you a new account with your Facebook credentials). Hopefully now you see the severity of the issue.
Enough about WHY it’s important to set up….let’s talk about HOW to set it up. Go to Facebook.com, login, and click the blue gear icon in the top-right corner, and then click on your ‘Account Settings’ menu. Then, select the ‘Security’ section from the navigation menu on the left-hand side of the screen, and switch the trigger on for ‘Login Alerts’, and ‘Login Approvals’. Facebook will walk you through the setup for Login Approvals (their name for two-factor authentication)- so have your smartphone handy and the Facebook app installed. As far as security, you can have Facebook either text you a code when you need to login (SMS), or use their built in Code Generator in their app to get a code when you need one. Whatever you choose, once this is set up, if you log into Facebook from a NEW machine or device, it will require BOTH your regular password, and this extra numerical security code in order to work- adding a strong extra layer of security to your account.
If you need assistance setting this up, check out Facebook’s walkthrough here, or Tech Republic’s more detailed walkthrough here. Of course, Canyonero can always take care of this for you this as well. In light of the holiday season upon us, we would like to ask that if you’re traveling home for Thanksgiving, and you’re in that turkey coma after dinner, remember this article and consider spending a few minutes helping your parents or less-techy friends and relatives set this up.
