With the advent of the social network, personal security has become a more important topic than ever. If you are to ask the folks at Facebook about their security measures, they’d quickly tell you that they’re all good. But just how good? The company last week revealed some numbers that seem fine on paper, but once contemplated, are actually rather damning.
According to the company, about 0.06% of the over 1 billion logins made each day on Facebook are compromised. It’s important to note that “login” does not equal “user”, as one user might become the victim of 10 or more failed login attempts. Either way, 0.06% of 1 billion brings us to 600,000 – that’s 600,000 every single day.
How the logins are compromised in the first place is a very broad topic. Anything from successful phishing attempts to someone simply guessing your password could apply. As many people who use Facebook never log out of it on their mobile phones and computers, I’d guess that even more accounts are compromised even without the use of a password.
Logins aside, Facebook also boasts some spam-protection numbers. While e-mail suffers up to a 90% spam rate, Facebook sits at a modest 4%. But when you compare the fact that sending someone an e-mail is a lot easier than sending them a Facebook message (if they are not on your list), is 4% really that impressive of a number?
For about as long as the Internet has existed, there have been two important rules, that if followed, will protect you as well as possible. The same rules apply to Facebook and other social networking usage. A) Use good passwords and B) Don’t download (or sign-up) to everything you see.