Infected Pc's Won't Be Allowed On Facebook.

[Danielx386]

Facebook has joined forces with McAfee to provide discounted security services to all of its 350 million members.
Facebook users will be eligible for a free, six-month trial of McAfee Internet Security Suite software and a discounted price thereafter.

If Facebook uncovers any sort of threat, the social networking site said it would take steps to secure a user's computer, a process that includes a sweep of the affected computer by McAfee technology.

"Now, if your computer is infected, you will be asked to run a scan and clean it before accessing Facebook," Facebook wrote in a blog post.

At launch, the McAfee software will be available to Facebook users in the U.S., U.K., Australia, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, France, Canada, Mexico, and Brazil. Other countries will be added throughout the first quarter.

To access the software, click the "Protect Your PC" tab on the McAfee Facebook Page.

"Facebook is very serious about security and has made significant efforts to protect its users and service by investing in dedicated teams and sophisticated systems, and this partnership with McAfee furthers that mission," Todd Gebhart, executive vice president and general manager of McAfee Consumer, Mobile and Small Business, said in a statement.

"By partnering with a market leader like McAfee, we are taking an unprecedented step towards making the entire Internet more secure and reducing the possibility of threats being brought onto our service by unsuspecting users," said Elliot Schrage, vice president of global communications, marketing and public policy at Facebook. "Keeping the Internet secure requires that users, security vendors and Internet companies all work together. We think we've developed an excellent model for this collaboration, and to ensure the greatest possible value to our users, Facebook will not accept any revenue from subscriptions. We hope this is something that other services will emulate."

In addition, Facebook and McAfee will work together to develop content for the Facebook Security Page, and McAfee will frequently update its own page.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2358015,00.asp


Virus writers: Take this thread and smoke it.

Daniel

[diabolo]

does this mean we would all have to use McAfee if we want access to FB? I hope not.

[Zubair]

Is this a planing or it is applied

[Danielx386]

No, I don't think so.

Is this a planing or it is applied: I don't know but you get their software fore free for 180 days

Daniel

[Zubair]

only 180 days!! :S

then we have to pay for it!!!

[Danielx386]

But you don't need to use it, you just need something installed from my understanding

Daniel

[wongers]

that will never actually come to play in the end, surely not?

altho if this did happen, i cant imagine this would be something that would actually become complete specific to McAfee, every virus scanner would have to release a patch for this to become widely compatable.

it would kind of come down to a similar issue as Windows getting bummed for preloading their releases with Internet Explorer and not giving people the choice. (cant be arsed going in to that with an more detail)

[callumacrae]

What about Linux peoples? If you have to have a virus scanner installed to use fbook...?

~Callum

[wongers]

its an interesting thought as to how they would acheive this, i mean would facebook request that you download a security plug in before you are able to view the site? in which case, would that be more a browser security as apposed to anti-virus but can the 2 be interlinked? quite an interesting project i say.

[farscapeone]

This is much more complicated then it seams to be. People at Facebook know that they can't "force" users to do or have something on their computers cos they will leave and go to some other soc-networking site. I don't have to mention what impact would it make on number of new users.

Somebody will say, "so what, if you are not infected you don't have to worry about it", right? Ideally, yes, but we all know that every anti-virus software has so called "false alarms". What then? How can we be sure that McAfee is right? We can't.

Here's my opinion.
I think that this is just another of those McAfee business ideas.