Most sites, when signing you up or verifying who you are after suspicious activity, ask you to answer a security question, or possibly read two out-of-focus words and type them into a box. Facebook is testing out a “social captcha”, where pictures of friends of the user trying to log in are shown, and the would-be user is asked to identify them. It’s only being used on a limited basis for now (though one Lifehacker editor encountered it last year, but it’s a good reason to think about stripping down your Facebook to actual friends for the future. [Facebook Blog]
Facebook Experimenting With ‘Social Captchas’ For Authentication
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4 responses to “Facebook Experimenting With ‘Social Captchas’ For Authentication”
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66biscuitsThis apparently arose out of a sudden urgent need to provide a whole country with a secure login procedure.
http://bit.ly/dFD6Yc
Tunisian ISPs were capturing user logins at the behest of so called Ammar, the govt. body that censors the internet in that country.
Scary stuff. -
MenaI’ve had to identify friends for quite some time now and you are absolutely right, the more “friends” the harder it gets. Good thing I do a “friend cull” every few months or so. 🙂
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JessTSurely this would then be open to all sorts of abuse.
Say I make all my photos private except to my friend Bill.
Someone comes along and attempts to reset Bill’s password (or somesuch), and is suddenly presented with one of my photos. Not so private anymore… (Oh, and hopefully Bill’s account isn’t compromised).
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friend of a friendhere’s another interesting thing.. what if…
i am a close friend of bill and know a large subset of his friends. facebook just got easier to crack!
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