Facebook Antivirus and wall spams

Social networking sites are often targeted by Cyber criminals in the rising Web 2.0 Internet world. Recently with the completion of its 6th anniversary Facebook has reached mark of 400 million users. No doubt it is becoming soft target as it is easier to get huge online users community. Some Facebook applications use different innovative techniques to force user to grant permissions to collect friend lists and push themselves to other users’ profile. Such applications may post to users’ walls which could be used to abuse privacy.


Recent example is Facebook application that poses itself as Facebook Antivirus. It tags photos of infected profile with 20 from friends list and publishes the tagged photo to the wall. Subsequently friends get the update notifications and end up in getting fake antivirus.

If you observe that any of your friend has tagged you photo, following are the steps to manually remove the tag:
– Open your photos
– Click the photo picture which is tagged
– If you your name appears in the tagged list, click the ‘Remove Tag’ link for your name

Facebook has removed the fake application at the time of writing this blog, however gives insights into Security and privacy issues with this popular social networking site. Users are advised to appropriately configure Facebook privacy settings and be more careful when clicking any links.

More details
https://thefacebookinsider.com/2010/03/warning-facebook-antivirus-will-virally-spam-your-friends/

https://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=287542162130

https://www.allfacebook.com/2009/12/facebook-privacy-new/

Thanks Rajesh for the input.

Ranjeet Menon

Ranjeet Menon


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