On Tuesday, Facebook revealed that it has added free anti-malware software download to users trying to use Facebook from infected devices. This service is being provided with the help of F-secure and Trend Micro security software companies. Facebook will recommend any of these two based on the malware deteted on your system.
“Our goal is to make it easier for people to find and use the right technology to better protect their devices. We’ve worked with F-Secure and Trend Micro to incorporate free anti-malware software downloads directly into our existing abuse detection and prevention systems. These are the same systems that help us block malicious links and bad sites from among the trillions of clicks that take place every day on Facebook,” Facebook explained.
Infected users will see pop-up notification with the suggestion of anti-malware softeare to ownload. If you click download, software will download and install itself in your system. You will see the result of scan as notification in your Facebook when the scan and cleaning is finished, the software will uninstall itself.
So, it is clear that you cannot keep the software. It will only clean your system if you are infected.
In case you do not want to download and use this service, you can skip. But it will show you notification pop-up again if it finds you infected.
This will surely reduce the number of spam links we see on Facebook. Because most of the times infected computers are the reason of those spam links.
This is not the fist time Facebook is offering free security products. Back in April 2012, Facebook started offering free anti-virus software from five major security software vendors, Microsoft, McAfee, TrendMicro, Sophos and Symantec.
Facebook also confirmed that it will also add more additional software offering in future.
