Linda posted on January 14, 2010 10:06
Yesterday, my email contained a link to an article titled "Facebook Partners With McAfee to Chase Out the Rats It Let In" over on TechNewsWorld.com.
In the very near future, Facebook will begin quarantining subscibers' PCs if the PC is infected. The subscriber's PC will be remotely scanned by a special application developed by McAfee called McAfee Scan and Repair. The user will also be presented with an ad for a free six month subscription to McAfee's Internet Security Suite Software.
The companies are reported to be developing educational materials that will be posted on Facebook for subscribers.
The article is somewhat critical of Facebook for not taking measures to remove the links that cause the infections in the first place instead of dealing with the problems caused by the links. It shouldn't be terribly difficult to use existing tools to scan links added to users' pages, find the harmful links, and remove them. Instead, Facebook is partnering with McAfee in a move that I am guessing will be of great benefit to the security company.
Although my staff and I have not yet run through this procedure, or talked to any users that have, I am guessing that there will be an option to continue with McAfee's service for a fee at the end of the six month free subscription. At the very least, given Facebook's current 350 million users, McAfee will have the opportunity to advertise to a very large pool of prospects. If users understand the process and if McAfee is able to deliver on its promises, this is likely to be a very profitable partnership.
I will update this post after we have seen exactly how this is rolled out, so stay tuned for more details.