How to Set Up a Secure Facebook Profile

Keep your Facebook account secure.

Facebook is a great way to connect with people, but the site loses its appeal if your page gets hacked. Instead of sharing pictures and highlights from your day, your hacked profile may send out viruses, bad links or inappropriate status updates to your Facebook friends. Protect yourself from this situation by setting up a secure Facebook profile. This way, you can rest assured from the start that your page, and the information on it, is safe from hackers.

Instructions

1. Choose a secure password. Avoid actual words and instead go for combinations of letters, punctuation and numbers. If the combination is random, it's harder to guess.

2. Keep your password private.Don't share it with anyone, and don't write it down or store it on a computer, phone or other mobile device.

3. Type facebook.com into your browser to get to the site -- never click a link to take you there. Links may take you to a fake Facebook login page that is set up to steal your login information.

4. Check the URL before you log in to Facebook, making sure you're on the real site.

5. Keep your Internet browser up to date, since the newest versions usually have the best security features.

6. Turn on secure browsing to encrypt your Facebook traffic, making it harder to hack. To do this, click "Account" at the top-right of your screen, then "Account Settings." Click "Change" next to "Account Security" then check "Secure Browsing" and click "Save."

7. Resist clicking suspicious links, even if they come from friends. Clicking a link that is spam or a virus may allow someone access to your account. It may also send the same link to all of your friends, endangering their accounts, as well.

8. Turn on log in notifications to let you know if your account is accessed through a new computer or device. To do this, click "Account," then "Account Settings." Click "Change" to the right of "Account Security." Find the heading "When a new computer or mobile device logs into this account" and check all of the alerts you would like to receive.

9. Log out of your account each time you are done using Facebook.