There are lots of ways to hack people’s Facebook accounts, and no one way protects against it all. However, one quick Settings change you can make will help you a lot.

Go to Account at upper right of your Facebook screen and click it.

Choose Account Settings in the drop down menu.

Look down near the bottom for Account Security.

Click the Change link to the right of Account Security.

Check off the box below Secure Browsing (https) that will allow you to Browse Facebook on a secure connection (https) whenever possible.

This will allow you to send your information to Facebook encrypted, and the information coming back to you from Facebook will also be encrypted, wherever and whenever it could be. When is this? When your Internet Service Provider (ISP) allows it to be. You can tell if you look at the URL in the

Address Bar of your browser when you surf and see the https at the start of the URL. That’s the secure encryption you see when you do a lot of e-commerce, paying for stuff online at good secure sites. Otherwise, you’d only see http without the s that stands for secure… even if your ISP allows for it. That seems dumb not to allow security when security is available, as a default setting.

It’s a simple and effective change, but here’s my question for Facebook head Mark Zuckerberg if I could ask him a question. Why does Facebook constantly make default settings that are good for Facebook and not good for its users?

Their privacy settings are by default open, for example. I know it’s a social network site, and they get more ads with more traffic, from people being to access others’ profiles and looking when they might not otherwise be able to look. But is Facebook struggling that they need to get revenue at the cost of having these potential harms to its less than aware users? I’ve heard it said Mark is very focused in life to see his life through the lens of Facebook, which is great to a certain extent. But how’s about something good for its users once in a while, when there may be a little cost to Facebook?

Or how’s about Facebook sending periodic usage advice emails, each packed with a whole bunch of good advice to make people look rather than an email for each item that would get annoying? Otherwise, the only places you and I find about this stuff would be from the outside.

I don’t know why Facebook subjects its users to unnecessary threats when it doesn’t have to, but what I can tell you is I’m glad those Winklevoss twins don’t have any real stake in Facebook in terms of influencing its operations. Winkie and Twinkie are the biggest preppie pricks I have ever seen in my life, and them doing the media character assassination tour isn’t helping their image. But you know, if you have some money, there are always going to be people who will want to be your friends. Just better hope they continue to have it cause those friends are only investors. They won’t be there when the money is gone. They’d be making you pay for elite Facebook accounts by now if they have any had any say in the running of Facebook. They feel entitled to it all when Mark and many others have done all the work to make Facebook what it is. Those guys should have taken the settlement they got and just stick to being preppie pricks they’re so good at doing.

Anyway, back to the settings.

Checking off notification for an email to be sent to you every time a new computer logs into your account is up to you. It could get annoying pending how many different places you log into your account. I basically keep mine to two, home and maybe work every now and then when I actually need it at work to check up on something. That’s good advice, too, but not practical for everybody.