Users will soon be required to use two-factor authentication to protect their accounts on Facebook.
Human rights activists, journalists, and government officials are among those considered to be at high risk.
Users will soon be required to use two-factor authentication to protect their accounts on Facebook. For accounts that are at a high risk of being hacked, the social media company is considering making two-factor authentication mandatory. Human rights advocates, journalists, and government officials are among those deemed to be at high risk. Adding a second factor of authentication to an account gives an extra degree of security.
The new system will be rolled out as part of Facebook’s increased security initiative, Facebook Protect. The initiative was created to safeguard the accounts of those who are at a greater risk of their credentials being hacked by cyber criminals. The social media app is also experimenting with making the feature available to all users. That, however, is not going to happen anytime soon.
“2FA is such a core component of any user’s online defence, so we want to make this as easy as possible. To help drive wider enrolment of 2FA, we need to go beyond raising awareness or encouraging enrolment. This is a community of people that sit at very critical points in public debate and are highly targeted, so for their own protection, they probably should be enabling 2FA.“ Nathaniel Gleicher, Head of Security Policy at Facebook told TechCrunch about the feature.
To continue using the social media app, accounts in the high-risk category will need to enable 2FA. If a user who has been recognized by Facebook as having a high-risk account fails to enable two-factor authentication before the expiration date, he will lose access to his account. While Facebook will not permanently block users’ accounts, they will be required to enable two-factor authentication in order to restore access to their accounts.
Facebook said that 9,50,000 of the 1.5 million accounts enrolled in the Facebook Protect initiative have already enabled two-factor authentication. By the end of the year, Facebook plans to expand two-factor authentication to more than 50 countries, including India, the United States, and Portugal.
