Despite the security concerns that have plagued Facebook for years, most people are sticking around and new members keep on joining. This has led Facebook to break records numbers with over one billion monthly active users as of October 2012—and around 600 million active daily users.
We share our lives on Facebook. We share our birthdays and our anniversaries. We share our vacation plans and locations. We share the births of our sons and the deaths of our loving ones. We share our most cherished moments and our most painful thoughts. We divulge every aspect of our lives. We even clamor to see the latest versions even before they're ready for primetime.
But we sometimes forget who's watching.
We use Facebook as a tool to connect, but there are those people who use that connectivity for malicious purposes. We reveal what others can use against us. They know when we're not home and for how long we're gone. They know the answers to our security questions. People can practically steal our identities—and that's just with the visible information we purposely give away through our public Facebook profile.
The scariest part is that as we get more comfortable with advances in technology, we actually become more susceptible to hacking. As if we haven't already done enough to aid hackers in their quest for our data by sharing publicly, those in the know can get into our emails and Facebook accounts to steal every other part of our lives that we intended to keep away from prying eyes.
In fact, you don't even have to be a professional hacker to get into someone's Facebook account.
It can be as easy as running Firesheep on your computer for a few minutes. In fact, Facebook actually allows people to get into someone else's Facebook account without knowing their password. All you have to do is choose three friends to send a code to. You type in the three codes, and voilà—you're into the account. It's as easy as that.
In this article I'll show you these, and a couple other ways that hackers (and even regular folks) can hack into someone's Facebook account. But don't worry, I'll also show you how to prevent it from happening to you.
Method 1: Reset the PasswordThe easiest way to "hack" into someone's Facebook is through resetting the password. This could be easier done by people who are friends with the person they're trying to hack.
- The first step would be to get your friend's Facebook email login. If you don't already know it, try looking on their Facebook page in the Contact Info section.
- Next, click on Forgotten your password? and type in the victim's email. Their account should come up. Click This is my account.
- It will ask if you would like to reset the password via the victim's emails. This doesn't help, so press No longer have access to these?
- It will now ask How can we reach you? Type in an email that you have that also isn't linked to any other Facebook account.
- It will now ask you a question. If you're close friends with the victim, that's great. If you don't know too much about them, make an educated guess. If you figure it out, you can change the password. Now you have to wait 24 hours to login to their account.
- If you don't figure out the question, you can click on Recover your account with help from friends. This allows you to choose between three and five friends.
- It will send them passwords, which you may ask them for, and then type into the next page. You can either create three to five fake Facebook accounts and add your friend (especially if they just add anyone), or you can choose three to five close friends of yours that would be willing to give you the password.
How to Protect Yourself
- Use an email address specifically for your Facebook and don't put that email address on your profile.
- When choosing a security question and answer, make it difficult. Make it so that no one can figure it out by simply going through your Facebook. No pet names, no anniversaries—not even third grade teacher's names. It's as easy as looking through a yearbook.
- Learn about recovering your account from friends. You can select the three friends you want the password sent to. That way you can protect yourself from a friend and other mutual friends ganging up on you to get into your account.
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