Over the past few months Facebook Security has been focused on helping our users stay free from malware. Malware, short for malicious software, are programs installed on your device to disrupt normal operations, collect personal information or gain access to a system. For the past couple years, we have developed systems to proactively identify spam and other malicious content posted on Facebook by user devices infected with malware. After we identify a possible infection, we will notify the user and provide, free of charge, an anti-virus product capable of cleaning the user's device. Now, we are pleased to offer these tools directly to the people who use our service. If you are concerned that your device may have been infected by malware, you can visit http://on.fb.me/infectedMSE or http://on.fb.me/infectedMcA to be self-enrolled in either our Microsoft Security Essentials or McAfee Scan and Repair malware checkpoints.
This April, to help protect our users and their devices from viruses and malware, we launched the Facebook Anti-Virus Marketplace to provide free anti-virus from the industry's leaders and made significant enhancements to our external blacklist system to bring our users even better protection against harmful websites that may download a virus directly to your computer. And last month, we made changes to our mobile reporting flows and introduced Code Generator for Android to bring even more of our safety and security features to mobile. Finally, we partnered with external computer security teams to notify affected users if they have been infected by DNSChanger to help these people ensure continuous connectivity.
Previously, if you suspected you may have malware installed on your device, you would either need to run anti-virus on your device or wait until Facebook identified an actionable threat. Now, with our new self-enrollment malware checkpoint, you will be able to proactively obtain your choice of a free anti-virus product to scan and clean your system.
We currently offer two products for all of our users: McAfee's Scan and Repair and Microsoft's Security Essentials.
- The McAfee option will download a small program onto your Windows computer to perform a one-time scan of your system for malware. It will not interfere with your existing anti-virus or other security products. After it scans your system, it will give you the option to automatically or manually remove the files it flags as malicious.
- The Microsoft Security Essentials option is a full anti-virus product. Upon download and install, it will add anti-virus software to your computer that will continue to protect your system with the latest anti-virus signatures from Microsoft.
We hope that by making our technology available to more users, on demand, will help all the people who use our service keep their data and devices secure. You can find more information on keeping your information safe on the Facebook Security Page and the Security on Facebook site.
