Information Madness

Brad Goodman is a freelance writer and a guest blogger for My Dog Ate My Blog

Lots of mobile, connected people own portable devices that can access the Internet, have Facebook profiles, and use unsecured wireless networks to get online when out in public over the course of a day.

Lots of Facebook users have also seen the amount of spam plaguing the social network increase pretty substantially in the last several years, with friends leaving posts on everyone's walls about free iPads, fake job offers, pyramid schemes, and other scams advertised by bots that hijack Facebook profiles.

One potential factor here is the ease with which users using certain Firefox extensions on public networks can steal Facebook logins and passwords; as a consequence, it's important to enable secure data transmissions wherever possible when using Facebook. Conveniently, this is an easy thing to do, and as of early this month every Facebook user can do it, which will encrypt all data transmissions that can be encrypted.

On a Facebook page, click on "Account" in the top right corner, then click on "Account Settings." You'll then be taken to your account settings. Find "Account Security" in this list, and select "change" on the right side to modify its settings. This will then bring down an expanded menu. Check the box next to "Browse Facebook on a secure connection (https) whenever possible," and check "Send me an email" if you want to receive a notification every time a new computer logs into your Facebook account, though this isn't as important as enabling secure connections.

Check the box that reads "Save" and return to any other Facebook page. Every Web browser tells you that your connection is secure differently, but make sure that the URL of the Facebook page you're on begins with "https://" rather than "http://" and you're likely good to go, making it much safer to browse Facebook on insecure or public wireless networks.