Facebook has rolled out a new feature for the social networking website to make things easier for people to defend and protect their machines. Users that log into a Facebook account from an infected PC will see a popup from F-Secure and Trend Micro; and they will then be able to download a malware removal program from one of those two companies.
The feature will only kick in if it detects that the infected device is trying to interact with Facebook in a suspicious way; although it is not clear what this means. The anti-malware remover will also uninstall itself after it completes its task, meaning that it will not keep you protected from any other infections that do not try to interact with your Facebook account.
Protecting users from malware is a big deal these days, and it is nice to see a social networking site try something new. Whether or not this works is still a massive question mark, as Facebook does not explain what else the anti-malware programs look into or whether they report back to anyone.
Someone should also tell Facebook that a popup warning users about malware and prompting them to download a solution looks very much like popular malware scams.
[Source: Facebook Security]
