Facebook hacking isn’t a new phenomenon, but a day after CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook page was hacked, the social-networking giant is moving to put stronger security in place. The announcement opened the floodgates to consumer complaints about everything from unwanted photo tagging to the new profile pages.
Facebook isn’t connecting the Zuckerberg hack and the security changes. Rather, the company is pointing to Friday as Data Privacy Day, an international effort by governments, businesses and advocacy groups to raise awareness about the importance of staying in control of personal information.
Facebook once again stressed that a key part of controlling information has always been protecting against security threats like viruses, malware and hackers. And that, said Facebook security engineer Alex Rice, is why the company is rolling out new security features.
The HTTPS Factor
“Starting today we’ll provide you with the ability to experience Facebook entirely over HTTPS,” Rice said. “You should consider enabling this option if you frequently use Facebook from public Internet access points found at coffee shops, airports, libraries or schools. The option will exist as part of our advanced security features, which you can find in the Account Security section of the Account Settings page.”
Just as quickly as Rice introduced the new tool, he cited reasons why consumers might not want to use it. First, encrypted pages take longer to load. Consumers might notice that Facebook is slower using HTTPS.
What’s more, he said, some Facebook features, including many third-party applications, aren’t currently supported in HTTPS. Facebook will work on addressing those issues in the next few weeks.
“Facebook faces increasing scrutiny around privacy in general, and so news of hacking is bad PR for the company all the way around. The move to HTTPS is probably coincidental, although it looks like a direct response to the hacking into…