“Your account protection status: low” screams the alert on Facebook. “Increase protection” it offers. Is it a scam? A virus? Or is it really Facebook giving you a warning? It turns out that the warning really is from Facebook, but it’s not nearly as urgent as they would lead you to believe.
If you click on the “Increase Protection” button, it will take you to an area where Facebook helps you to increase your Facebook account protection in three steps. These steps are, Facebook says, to help you should you need to get back into your account, presumably after it has been hacked and someone else has taken control.
The three steps are providing Facebook with a secondary email address, signing up for Facebook mobile, and setting “a security question that only you can answer.”
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Frankly, we find the scare tactic of saying that your “protection status is low” to be disingenuous bordering on the specious. And who really benefits more from you signing up for Facebook mobile – you, or Facebook?
That said, setting a personal security question: you can never really go wrong with that. And you can absolutely skip steps 1 and 2, and do just step number 3 (“Choose a security question that only you can answer”). So go ahead and set a personal security question, but don’t feel pushed into the other two steps, especially signing up for Facebook Mobile.
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The account security message irks me.
I don’t get why some people are okay with entering their mobile phone # — especially considering the headlines a few months back when it looked like Facebook was handing over user’s mobile numbers (along with their addresses) to developers.
Personally, the security of a social network profile is not important enough to handle over my phone number. It’s not listed anywhere on my profile, if I wanted a friend to have it, they’d have it already.
Yes this was helpful. Farcebook I call them. when was anomoyous going to whamy them? Sooner the better!!!