Facebook provides new security feature: ‘one-time password’

In the virtual world, there's nothing more precious than your precious Facebook password, (well maybe you're online banking details, but that's about it.) Allowing people to see your password (whether accidentally or not) will almost certainly lead to your friends, excuse the term, 'fraping' you and on a serious note those dodgy fraudsters and hackers lurking in the shadows will love the bags of personal information they could get from the social networking site.

At home, most people don't have a problem, but in the big bad world a quick check on a public computer in say a hotel or cafe could lead to trouble. You don't know how secure or unsecure a public PC is, there could even be malicious software installed or a keylog, it sounds crazy but it happens.

Fortunately a new service recently rolled out by Facebook provides a novel way to keep secure. Instead of using you're 'real password' and risking somebody snatching it, users can now request a 'one-time-password' which lasts for just 20 minutes.

Jake Brill, a Facebook product manager said "If you have any concerns about security of the computer you’re using while accessing Facebook, we can text you a one-time password to use instead of your regular password."

To use the service, users must first configure their accounts to work with a designated mobile phone number. When they text "otp" to 32665, they should immediately receive a password that’s good for the next 20 minutes.

The feature is only available to select Facebook users for now but over the next few weeks, it will gradually become available to everyone.

Other new security features include the ability to remotely sign out of accounts if you've forgotten to log off.

It’s reassuring that Facebook are doing their best to keep us protected but is there still more to be done?

Source: theregister