Facebook security criticised

Facebook's security procedures have been called into question by Finnish security firm F-Secure.

Security questions used by Facebook to protect accounts are too obvious and are about topics that many friends and associates of the account holder could know, F-Secure said.

In a social network, asking questions such as 'what is your mother's maiden name?' and 'what street did you grow up on?' is not a strong enough way of protecting accounts, F-Secure argued.

"Security challenge questions based on social information is probably not the best of ideas on a social-networking site. After all, who's going to know personal details about yourself?" said Sean Sullivan of F-Secure.

Sullivan called on the social network, which has more than 200 million members worldwide, to change its procedures.

"Facebook should revise this sooner than later," Sullivan said.

Recently, the actress Salma Hayek had her MobileMe account hacked into, reportedly by someone who managed to find the answer to her security question by using the web.

And recent research showed that many young people have hacked into a friend's social-networking account.

Facebook has faced security challenges before, such as when it was targeted by the Koobface worm.