To help users fight back against scammer, phishing and identity theft, one of the most used and accessed sites on the Web Facebook has taken a new security measures with an aim to reduce the amount of compromised accounts with a suspicious activity page.

Jake Brill, a project manager for the site integrity team at Facebook, wrote on the Facebook blog: “We’ve spent the last few months improving the way to guide people through the process of regaining access to their account after it’s been compromised and used to send spam. Currently, we send emails explaining what happened and provide links to remedy the situation. Now we’re moving towards a new model that also involves clear and simple steps taken within Facebook itself. In doing so, we can ensure that the person logging in is the true owner of the account, thereby preventing hackers from using it to send spam in the future.”

“Going forward, we’ll continue to send a notification email to the tiny percentage of people whose Facebook accounts have been compromised. What’s new is that when these people try to access the site, they’ll first see a page explaining what happened.”

Meanwhile, a recent survey by Webroot has revealed the social networkers’ risky behaviors, among them are:

Two-thirds of respondents don’t restrict any details of their personal profile from being visible through a public search engine like Google;

Over half aren’t sure who can see their profile;

About one third include at least three pieces of personally identifiable information;

Over one third use the same password across multiple sites; and
One quarter accept “friend requests” from strangers.

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