Facebook adds new privacy tools

Social networking giant Facebook has introduced two new privacy tools in an effort to tackle complaints that the site isn’t doing enough to protect users’ data.

The tools came out of an emergency meeting during which the company’s executives discussed with employees ways they could improve user interaction with privacy controls.

The first feature is designed for users to select which devices can be approved to log-in and receive notifications from Facebook. This would also alert users if an unauthorised user accesses the account.

“For example, you can save your home computer, your school or work computer, and your mobile phone. Once you’ve done this, whenever someone logs in to your account from a device not on this list, we’ll ask the person to name the device,” software engineer Lev Popov wrote on the company’s blog.

The second feature is the “opt-in” setting, which allows users to block notifications for log-ins from new devices. If Facebook identifies a rogue log-in on an unauthorised computer or device, it launches a series of questions to determine if the person accessing the account is actually the user.