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Do not make these mistakes if you are going to open Facebook away from home

Internet users are increasingly aware of security. Among the favorite accounts that we pay the most attention, when it comes to protecting them, are those of email and those of social networks. The latter offer us a wide range of possibilities and there are very different types. However, if we do not use them with caution when using them online, then our data may be compromised. In this regard, one of the factors that we must take into account is that not all the networks to which we connect are equally secure. In this article we are going to talk about a series of mistakes that you should not make if you are going to open Facebook away from home.

At Christmas time, on vacations and on the popular “bridges”, we sometimes use our equipment outside the home. Usually it is our laptop or smartphone. One of the things we pay the most attention to is social media like Facebook. For this reason, we are going to review a series of measures that can help us ensure security.

Be careful if you use Facebook outside the home

Public Wi-Fi networks are present in many places. We can find one in a mall, coffee shop, airport, and more. One thing to keep in mind is that we do not really know who may be behind that network, whether it is legitimate or not, or whether it may have vulnerabilities. For example, if that network has security flaws, it could be exploited by a cybercriminal to steal our data and observe everything we do.

The first thing we have to do when using our devices away from home is to have them with the updated operating system. Then they must also have a good antivirus. In public Wi-Fi networks, if we do not have protection measures, we should not log into our accounts, make payments and enter unencrypted pages such as those that are HTTP. Another aspect that must also be check is if we have activated the automatic Wi-Fi connection, since we could be exposing our information without realizing it.

In this case, if we want open Facebook away from home safely we must use a VPN. In these cases, it is best to opt for a quality paid VPN because the free ones sometimes end up leaking your data. Some quality VPNs could be NordVPN, Surfshark and PureVPN among others, if you want a free one, a very good option could be Cloudflare’s VPN, since they promise that they will not sell our data.

Protect your account with two-step authentication

The first line of defense for your Facebook account is your password. Therefore, we must worry about having a strong password which has to be composed of:

  1. Minimum containing 12 characters.
  2. Include uppercase, lowercase, and numbers.
  3. Special symbols such as $ must be added.

On the other hand, we must have a good password policy. This implies that they must be unique and must not be reused. Also a good measure when opening Facebook away from home is that let’s have multi-factor authentication activated. Thus, even if a cybercriminal steals our password, he will not be able to access it because he will be asked for a second factor that he does not have to be able to log in. Here you have explained how to protect your Facebook account in which it is also included how to activate two-step authentication.

How they can attack your account

We have already seen that opening Facebook outside the home involves more dangers, especially if we use a public Wi-Fi network without adequate protection. Cybercriminals know that our social media accounts are highly valued by us and for that reason they are going to try to get hold of them.

As for the ways in which they could be done with our passwords, they would be:

  • With a brute force attack.
  • Using Keyloggers, which is malicious software that collects keystrokes to later obtain passwords.
  • Through a Phishing attack. After clicking on a link that impersonates Facebook, a very similar website appears in which we are asked to enter our credentials to log in. Then once done, this information is sent to the attacker.

In short, so that we can open Facebook away from home with greater peace of mind we need to have one strong password and 2FA authentication. In addition, we should not do it without using VPN, either to our own home VPN server installed on a NAS server or on the router (if it supports it, as they currently have ASUS, AVM FRITZ! Box or D-Link between other manufacturers), although you can always connect to a free VPN like Cloudflare or paid VPN like the ones we have talked about.

Finally, you may be interested in knowing what the main types of Phishing attacks are, which is one of the dangers that can affect your Facebook account.

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