It is estimated that one in every 5 Facebook users, or about 2 percent, have admitted to spying on other people’s accounts. This is not as simple as Facebook stalking, which is keeping tabs on your estranged family members or significant others, but rather actually logging into a person’s account without their knowledge to look at their private messages and other information. A university study in Canada found that 24 percent of the subjects who took part in the survey had accessed someone else’s Facebook account without the user’s permission, in most cases for snooping purposes.
Luckily, there is a way to protect your account from prying eyes, and it can be done on both mobile and desktop devices. It is also extremely easy.
To get started, just select Security and login.
From there you’ll be able to see where you’re logged in, and provides information like the type device of device that logged in and its location, as well as showing which devices are ‘active now,’ along with a history of all logins.
If you see a device you don’t recognize or trust, you will have the option to log that device out of your account. You also have the option to log out of all the devices that are currently logged in.
It is also a good idea to enable 2-factor authentication and make sure that you have a strong and secure password.
This is the advice that Google has for creating a strong password:
Create a password using eight characters or more, utilizing character capitalization, numbers and some special characters
Avoid any personal info like the name of your pet or your birth date
Don’t use common words or patterns like ‘abcd’ or ‘1234’
If you follow these simple steps and regularly check on where your logins are coming from, you can ensure the security of your account.
