Has your Facebook account ever come under attack by a hacker employed by Vladimir Putin or the NSA? Is probably hasn’t but that isn’t stopping Facebook from setting up a new warning system that will send you notifications if it believes your account is being subjected to a state-sponsored attack.
FROM EARLIER: ‘Netflix for pirates’ now streams movies directly to your web browser
“Starting today, we will notify you if we believe your account has been targeted or compromised by an attacker suspected of working on behalf of a nation-state,” Facebook chief security officer Alex Stamos writes. “While we have always taken steps to secure accounts that we believe to have been compromised, we decided to show this additional warning if we have a strong suspicion that an attack could be government-sponsored. We do this because these types of attacks tend to be more advanced and dangerous than others, and we strongly encourage affected people to take the actions necessary to secure all of their online accounts.”
If Facebook suspects you’re being attacked by a government-sponsored hacker, this is the notification you’ll see:
As you can see, Facebook will start sending you special security codes whenever you log into its website or app on a new device or browser. This way, you’ll be the only person who can access your account… presuming, of course, that your attackers aren’t intercepting your emails or SMS messages as well.
Facebook says it can’t divulge how it knows that attacks on your account might be sponsored by governments and it says it will only send this notification in cases where it “strongly” suspects your account is under attack from a government.
