Blog 2-Greg Renard

One thing that surprised me the most recently would have to be the idea of privacy and security. However, it is not the idea that surprises me but rather how Facebook thinks that their new way of "security" will help benefit people whom have lost their password. What does this new level of security entail might you ask? In short, if you want to set up this level of security you will need a few GOOD friends to confide in in-case of the dreaded time that you may lose your password. So, lets say you lose your password, the people whom you have chosen to help you with the recovery will then receive an email with your password. In return, then they can finally let you know what that password was you were looking for.

An article that I was reading yesterday on the Facebook issue had brought up the idea that "friends are not always friends forever." This statement is dead on. Think of someone whom you were really good friends with and never thought you two would end up despising each other and not talking to each other again. It is hard to imagine when you are their friend at the time, but chances are most people have run into this predicament. So, then this brings up the idea if this new level of security is really a good alternative to those not remembering their passwords. In the end, this password recovery system could end up haunting the user. The reason I say this is that if you ended on bad terms with a friend whom you had chosen to be a so called guardian of your password, what is to say that they are not going to log onto your account when they get that email with your password.

Facebook is trying to make things more secure for people and I praise them on that. However, they definitely need to think things over before coming out with a feature like this. What is so wrong with the “forgot my password” feature that sends it to your own email and not others. If you do not know either your user name or password, you can always email Facebook with your credentials you had on the account. In other words, there are much better alternatives so choose wisely.