In a bid to boost security on Facebook, the social networking web site is asking every of its quite 900 million active users to produce it with their portable numbers. The move comes within the wake of much-publicised password hacks at different networking sites as well as LinkedIn and eHarmony, the Daily Mail reported.
Millions of Facebook users have already seen a link at the highest of their desktop news feed requesting them to follow 'simple security tips'. Those that click on the link are led to the site's security page where they're asked to select a novel password and given a tutorial on the way to spot a web scam.
They are then requested to produce their phone variety for secure account recovery.
This, Facebook claims, works as a result of when a user confirms their phone variety it permits the positioning to automatically wipe their password within the event of their account being hacked.
The social network would then send a text message to the user informing that their password has been modified.
This, the positioning reasons, would be preferable to sending the user and email as a result of several of those are ignored as assumed junk and obtain deleted.
Facebook these days said the desktop security message, already seen by countless users within the US, are on all accounts within the next few days.
However, it claims that the protection update has nothing to try to to with the recent LinkedIn hack.
The social network for professionals, LinkedIn admitted to being hacked, however failed to reveal the precise figure, although 6.5 million of its 161 million users' passwords appeared on-line on a web site.
The website added that the lists revealed on-line solely contained passwords and not logins, however that in all chance any hacker would have them too.
And California-based eHarmony, one in every of the world's most well liked on-line dating websites, conjointly admitted earlier this month that the private passwords of a number of its customers were hacked and posted on-line.
The company, that has over twenty million registered users, confirmed that passwords had been compromised however failed to reveal the precise variety, though some technology consultants have place the figure at one.5 million.
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