Facebook just announced a tool that notifies you by e-mail or SMS text message when someone logs into your Facebook profile from an unknown computer.

The idea is to help you recognize when a hacker has broken into your account so you can respond quickly by either changing your password (if that’s still possible) or contacting Facebook.

Once you enable the notifications, you’ll be required to identify each computer you use to log in when you first use it and choose whether or not it’s a private or public machine. You’ll be able to see a history of registrations from machines potentially used by hackers, and of course those hackers will be forced to type something into the identification field to get in, so you should be able to tell whether it was just a login that you forgot or not.

Here’s a quick guide to turning this feature on and using it.

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Step 1: Go to Account Settings and Enable Notifications

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When you’re logged into Facebook, you’ll see the word “Account” in the top right corner of the browser window. Click there to get a drop-down menu of options, then click on “Account Settings,” as pictured below.

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Since Facebook’s latest privacy rollback, we are left asking how users can protect themselves, and for clarification about what happened. Here, then, is a quick guide to locking down the new Facebook.

First off, one big caveat: It is simply impossible to have the old Facebook experience with the old level of privacy. If you want the old level of privacy, you’re going to have to give up some functionality; if you want all the old functionality, you’re going to have to give up some privacy. Below, we detail what you’d need to do to maximize privacy, so you can decide for yourself whether to go down that road. continue reading…