A Setting Everyone in Lohman Needs to Set

Four Missouri lawmakers and a staffer have had their Facebook profiles hacked into over the past month. According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the victimized profiles logged onto Facebook via the House's public WiFi network shortly before being targeted.

Amid suggestions that the House should tighten access to their network, Facebook has introduced an option where users can log on and and surf with a secure connection. All users need to is go to their account settings and set up HTTPS browsing under "Account Security". Using an HTTPS connection, while resulting in longer waits for pages to load, would result in more information being encrypted when sent to and from the site.

Facebook's new security options includes e-mail and text alerts when a computer or mobile device access a user's account for the first time. They're also experimenting with social authentication, using pictures of the user's friends to verify that the person logging on is not a random hacker.

The change comes as an effort to prevent hackers from gaining access via public wireless networks, like those the House and Senate have in place at the State Capitol in Jefferson City. Since the session started last month, Democrat Stacey Newman of St. Louis, three Republicans (among them freshmen Donna Lichtenegger of Jackson and Dave Schatz of Sullivan) and a legislative aide to another Republican were victimized by hackers.