Protect Your Account With Facebook Security Checkup

You might not care much about your Facebook security beyond having what you believe to be a fairly hard-to-guess password. And that's fine; most people probably don't have much to worry about.

But in case you need a friendly reminder, Facebook has launched a new "Security Checkup" feature that should give users a bit more of a helping hand for setting up the various security measures that Facebook uses to keep your data safe.

Appearing at the top of users' news feeds, the Security Checkup will give Facebook fans some information about how they can optimize their account security—up to and including asking them to set up features like login alerts, which notify a user whenever their Facebook account is logged into from an unknown device. (If you get a notification that your account has been logged into from a country you aren't actually in, it might be time to change that password).

"If you see the test, you will be able to change your password, turn on login alerts, and clean up login sessions simply by clicking through the screen prompts. Based on feedback, we hope to make Security Checkup available more broadly and whenever you want to use it," Facebook product manager Melissa Luu-Van wrote in a blog post.

"Between this new checkup and the security content we recently added to Facebook Privacy Basics, it's easier than ever to find the information you want about how we protect your account and what tools are available to you."

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And, yes, Security Checkup does sound a lot like the Privacy Checkup tool that the social network unveiled in September: same idea, different settings.

Security Checkup is more focused on making sure that nobody accesses your account who should not. Privacy Checkup is designed to make sure you're aware of all the features you can use to make sure that only the people who you want to see your posts, or your profile information, can see them. Privacy Checkup is also helpful for going seeing which apps should be able to access facets of your Facebook account, as well as how you might be able to stop unwanted people from bothering you.