Get Notified When Your Facebook Account Gets Hacked

By: Karan Goel | 28th June 2010

I guess you have already read the 3 risks that you posses while using Facebook. One notable risk is getting your Facebook account hacked.

Tip: Tweak Your Privacy Setting.

Anyways, privacy is not the only risk; security is a potential risk too. Recently, millions of stolen and hacked Facebook accounts were on sale.

A new Facebook feature will notify you via an email and/or SMS whenever an unknown computer accesses your Facebook account. Cool, isn’t it?

The Setup

First of all login to your Facebook account. Using the Account dropdown menu, navigate to the “Account Settings” page. There you will see a new addition like this:

To enable this feature, click “Yes” followed by “Submit.” You’ve now turned on Facebook’s new account security settings.

How It Works

From my new iMac, I tried to login to my Facebook account, and got a screen like this:

I must enter a name for the device that I used to loign.

In and of itself this wouldn’t be that useful, but there’s more: I get a follow-up email informing me that someone logged into my account from a computer I’ve never used before. Check it out:

As you can see, I’m told the name of the computer that connected to Facebook, the time it was connected and that I should change my password ASAP if it wasn’t me that did this.

Other than the email, I also got an SMS to the mobile number attached to my Facebook account. Cool!