The security of Facebook, or alleged lack of, has been under scrutiny since the site first entered the social media scene. The website’s most recent effort to counteract the negative stigma has been to offer encrypted interaction within the site, according to a recent article I read. Encryption has always been a security feature as far as logging in goes, but now users have the option to turn on total encryption while on the site as an added feature on the Account Settings page.

This allows users who often use Facebook via public Internet access points while at school, in the library, waiting for a flight at the airport, chilling at a bistro, and so forth, the peace of mind that their facebooking is protected from third party meddling. Apparently the only downside is that some pages will suffer from load-lag and some third party applications won’t be support. That will soon change though as Facebook works on improving the feature so that HTTPS encryption is set as a default, as it is with Google.

This option comes in addition to remote logout capabilities and one-time passwords. They are also testing Social Authentication, a unique identity verification method, kind of like captcha, but instead of verifying that you are human, it presents you with a picture from your library and asks you the name of a friend.

For more information, go straight to the source, Facebook’s recent blog post.

Another new feature not necessarily related to Internet security, but certainly to community safety is the option to receive amber alerts through Facebook. You should definitely check that out too.