Facebook "Trusted Contacts" Lets You Pester Friends To Recover Account Access 114
alphadogg writes "Facebook Thursday said it's making available globally a feature called 'Trusted Contacts' that lets users select three to five friends who can help users recover account access such as if they forget their password. Facebook said the idea is that once these friends are identified as 'trusted contacts' through the user's security settings, Facebook will provide each of them with a special code. 'Enter the codes from [at least 3 of] your trusted contacts, and you'll be able to access your account,' Facebook says. 'After you set your trusted contacts, we'll notify them so that they can be ready to help you if you ever need it.'"
Collusion? (Score:5, Insightful)
While I'd hope that people would trust their friends to not abuse a privileged position in order to gain access to one's account, it's probably a good idea to pick friends from different, non-overlapping social circles to make it difficult for them to know who other "trusted" people for one's account are.
Re:Security (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree, I find this an excellent password recovery scheme. It does not protect against a bad choice in friends, but there are no technical protections possible against that. But for password recovery it is very good and quite safe against abuse by anonymous internet hackers.
Re:Security (Score:5, Insightful)
It's also excellent at providing Facebook data which of your friends are close friends. Very useful to charge advertisers more for fake likes from trusted friends who are more likely to have a bigger impact.
Re:Does anybody care? (Score:4, Insightful)
Probably nobody does in that cave you're hiding in, but out here in the world? Yeah, there's a couple people still using it, give or take millions.
Re:Does anybody care? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes. There is a real world outside of your room. People socialize. It might be hard to recognize it from the center of the universe you are in but it happens.
Re:Security (Score:4, Insightful)
There's already 5000 ways for them to discover what friends are more relevant to you, though.
They can analyze your interactions, your views of someones profiles/walls, your clicks on their shares, your groupings or other customized settings...
I don't think this is the sort of feature that will have so much adoption as to matter in that sense.
Re:Security (Score:4, Insightful)
Just because you trust someone to be _trustworthy_ doesn't mean that you trust their _opinions_. For example, I would trust some members of my family to not abuse having a house key, for example; wouldn't stop them from talking nonsense I don't agree with, though :-)
Re:Brain Fart (Score:2, Insightful)
I know lots of those people, but they are not my trusted friends. If you have no true trusted friends, don't set any on facebook. It's not mandatory.
Deleting account after death (Score:4, Insightful)
Sound like a good idea in theory, and it would also allow close friends to close an account of a departed one.
I know previously this can be distressing to contact facebook admins, and convince them that this is a valid request.