Facebook has had a long history of troublesome security issues. Users are always battling against the social network giant in an attempt to keep their person information private, while Facebook is always trying to mine more personal data to sell to advertisers or to make advertising more effective. As a result, there have been a lot of changes to the network over time, although most have been minor tweaks instead of major overhauls.
Here are a few highlights from some of the Facebook security issues that have popped up over the years:
Earlier this year, an independent researcher discovered
a serious bug regarding Facebook passwords: Anyone could come along and reset your password without even needing to know your current password. When you ask to reset your own password, there is a segment in the URL that can be changed to swap out your user ID for the ID of another user. You could then change that person's password to whatever you liked.
The bug was identified and corrected quickly. Now you must answer security questions and use your current password in order to request a reset or to enact one.
You can change the privacy on your wall and timeline posts so that only the people you want to see them can see them. You can make your posts public, or you can set them so that only your friends can see them, only the people you select can see them, or only you can see them.
When the timeline was introduced, many people found that all of their posts suddenly became public -- even posts that were many years old. Fortunately, Facebook introduced an option with the timeline that allowed users to set the privacy for all of their old posts at once. Instead of changing the security settings for each post, you were able to choose an option to limit the visibility of all your old posts.
In the past, when someone tagged you in a post, note or photo, it automatically showed up on your wall. That was a real problem for many people when unthinking friends posted photos of their drunken shenanigans from the weekend. Employers, family members or other people they may not have wanted to see them suddenly had unfiltered access.
Fortunately, Facebook introduced a feature that allowed users to review tags before they appeared on their wall -- and later their timeline. This allowed users to maintain the level of privacy they wanted.
When you chat with other users on Facebook, you have a reasonable expectation that those chats are private, just as a private message would be. However,
a glitch in Facebook's security a few years ago allowed other users to see the private chats, friend requests and other information of any other user on the network. The problem was resolved relatively quickly, and without much publicity, so few people were affected by the situation -- or even knew that it was a problem.
Another security bug found hackers with a loophole for running a malicious program on your computer
through a chat. When links are included in a chat, a preview window is displayed. With this bug, users only had to open the message in order for the preview to appear and the script to run -- rather than clicking on the link itself. Facebook has issued a patch for the bug and resolved the issue.
Every single thing you do on Facebook is monitored, even if you can't see a record of it yourself, and that includes your search history. That information was not made available to users before, but Facebook is currently correcting the oversight. By being able to review your search history, you will also be able to change the security settings for it to make sure that no one is able to see what you're looking for on the site. After all, you don't want anyone to know that you searched for your ex-girlfriend from college obsessively for weeks...
As with any online network, it is important that you are mindful of your privacy settings and what information you share when you are using Facebook. This quick look at the security history on Facebook shows that you can end up revealing far more information than you mean to on the network if you aren't careful.
If you know some more Facebook Security issues except these, you can mention it in the comment.
About the Guest Author:
Bridget Sandorford is a freelance food and culinary writer, where recently she’s been researching
pastry school Chicago. In her spare time, she enjoys biking, painting and working on her first cookbook.
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