Facebook boosts its security measures to reduce identity theft instances

Identity theft can come from a number of channels, and social networks are an easy way for a hacker to gain personal information from an unsuspecting victim. Facebook has released App Passwords and Trusted Friends which are tools to reduce the occurrences of identity theft, eWeek reports. The social network has more than 800 million users and is one of the most popular, spammed and hacked websites in the world. Facebook states that even with increased security measures, the social network still deals with 600,000 compromised accounts every day. The social network stated the new tools will help a user's account that has been hacked to re-access their account. Graham Cluley, a senior technology consultant at Sophos, wrote that users should watch out for their trusted friends for spam advertisements. Often a hacker will post a message on a friend's wall that leads to an illegitimate site. Graham goes on to stress that a substantial amount of users are unaware of these security measures. "It’s not hard to predict that the only people who might use such a feature might be those who are already very aware of privacy issues, rather than the great unwashed majority on Facebook", Cluley told eWeek.