Facebook Finally Offers Users Encryption - College of Charleston Libraries

If you’re an avid Facebook user then there’s one new feature you’ll probably want to enable straight away – the option to login, browse and do all your social networking worry-free, using a secure HTTPS connection to the server.

Facebook previously used HTTPS to handle logins, but from then on the site reverted to a non-secure version. Using the new setting found in the Account Security area under Account Settings (look for Secure Browsing) the whole session will be encrypted and less vulnerable to hijacking.

Users considered to be most at risk are those who regularly login from public access computers and unsecured wireless hot spots. If you do regularly use Facebook from any public places then we’d recommend changing to the HTTPS option as soon as you can.

As a consequence of the secure connection, pages may take longer to load than usual. There are also a large number of applications that are not yet compatible with the HTTPS.

In a blog post, Facebook’s Alex Rice said: “Some Facebook features, including many third-party applications, are not currently supported in HTTPS.

“We’ll be working hard to resolve these remaining issues. We are rolling this out slowly over the next few weeks, but you will be able to turn this feature on in your Account Settings soon. We hope to offer HTTPS as a default whenever you are using Facebook sometime in the future.”