*The Facebook programme offers vulnerable users, whose accounts are at a greater risk of being compromised, including journalists, human rights advocates, and activists as a way to further secure them

Isola Moses | ConsumerConnect

Leading tech giant Facebook has announced that it will be giving more consumers access to its security monitoring platform tagged, ‘Facebook Protect’, in 2021.

ConsumerConnect gathered the programme was offered to political officials during the 2020 United States elections.

The foremost social media platform will be offering the tool to other types of users whose accounts are at a greater risk of being compromised, such as journalists, human rights advocates, and activists, Axios report said.

Nate Gleicher, Head of Security Policy at Facebook, stated that Protect comes with real-time monitoring of potential hacking attempts and other security features, such as hardware keys to enable two-factor authentication.

Gleicher explained that more than 70 percent of people involved with the 2020 election had two-factor authentication turned on, and that Facebook is bolstering its account protection features in next year since compromised accounts can be used for malicious purposes.

Facebook wrote on page discussing the platform, that “we know that certain people, such as candidates, elected officials, or staff can be targeted by bad actors on social media platforms, including Facebook and Instagram.

“By enrolling, we’ll help these accounts (1) adopt stronger account security protections, like two-factor authentication, and (2) monitor for potential hacking threats.”