How creepy! Facebook wants you to know who is ‘targeting’ your profile

Oct 21, 2015

We all know that we should be checking our privacy settings on Facebook. Apparently this is not just to prevent someone we don’t know spotting a less than flattering snap of us from days gone by.

The social networking site is now offering a feature that will tell you who has been ‘spying’ on you.

The 'hacker alert’ feature is not necessarily what you might think. It is not actually put in place in order for you to see if the cute guy from the office has been having a look at your profile.

Instead, it was designed to tell you when governments are spying on you.

Chief Security Officer Alex Stamos wrote in a Facebook blog, "Starting today, we will notify you if we believe your account has been targeted or compromised by an attacker suspected of working on behalf of a nation-state."

This is what the notification will look like:

If users get the notification, the company is recommending rebuilding or replacing systems that have been infected by malware.

To avoid that, because that’s pretty impractical, Facebook suggests turning on login approval.

“We decided to show this additional warning if we have a strong suspicion that an attack could be government-sponsored.”

"We do this because these types of attacks tend to be more advanced and dangerous than others.”