Facebook has announced a series of new security measures introduced, including a partnership with Web of Trust. Facebook already has a system that automatically scans links to determine whether the websites associated with those links are spammy or contain malware.
Web of Trust is a free safe surfing tool that tells you which websites you can trust based on the ratings supplied by other Web of Trust community members. This partnership is expected to help improve Facebook’s system by providing additional bad links.
Login Approvals is another new feature available to everyone now. This is a two factor authentication system. If you choose to use it, whenever you log in to Facebook from a new or unrecognized device, it it will require that you also enter the code, Facebook sent to your mobile phone via text message.
Facebook has built up its defense system to detect clickjacking frauds of the Facebook Like button. Spammers sometimes take advantage of a vulnerability in the web browser to try to trick people into clicking on links they might not want to click on. This is called clickjacking.
Self-XSS Protection has been improved. Now, when Facebook detects that someone has pasted malicious code into the address bar, it will show a challenge to confirm that the person meant to do this as well as provide information on why it’s a bad idea.
Symantec few days back discovered that in certain cases, Facebook IFRAME applications inadvertently leaked access tokens to third parties like advertisers or analytic platforms. It is estimated that as of April 2011, close to 100,000 applications were enabling this leakage of your personal data. Over the years, hundreds of thousands of applications may have inadvertently leaked millions of access tokens to third parties. You can read more about it here.
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