Facebook to use friends' faces as a security measure

Facebook shows off its faces
Facebook shows off its faces

Facebook has revealed it is working on a new and rather innovative security measure for the site, which involves the identification of your Facebook friends.

Facebook has been looking at ways to add an extra layer of security to your Facebook account Inception-style, which will stop would-be hackers taking over your profile.

While security protocols, rather embarrassingly, didn't work this week for a Mark Zuckerberg fan page, Facebook is hoping that 'social authentication' will bring more security to the site.

Knowing who your friends are

"Instead of showing you a traditional Captcha on Facebook, one of the ways we may help verify your identity is through social authentication," said Facebook in a blog.

"We will show you a few pictures of your friends and ask you to name the person in those photos.

"Hackers halfway across the world might know your password, but they don't know who your friends are."

It's true that hackers don't know who your friends are, but do you? Some people will have procured a number of hangers-on in their friends list, so it will be interesting just how many legitimate people get stuck on trying to name their friends.

Social authentication is still in the test stage at the moment, but it could well be the thing to deter hackers from getting to your profile – especially if they don't like the look of your mate's ugly mug.

Marc Chacksfield

Marc Chacksfield is the Editor In Chief, Shortlist.com at DC Thomson. He started out life as a movie writer for numerous (now defunct) magazines and soon found himself online - editing a gaggle of gadget sites, including TechRadar, Digital Camera World and Tom's Guide UK. At Shortlist you'll find him mostly writing about movies and tech, so no change there then.