Facebook Rolls Out Security Checkpoints

Nowadays, hackers seem to be highly active, i.e. recently4.5 million Yahoo password were hacked and previously, eHarmony and LinkedIn were targeted by hackers. Besides hacking big bunches of social accounts, it has become a very common practice to hack user accounts through malicious software and then use their accounts for malevolent activities on different social networking sites.

However, in order to cope up with this challenging situation and keep Facebook pages virus free , the social networking giant Facebook has introduced a feature that enables users to lock down their Facebook accounts and clean the system from malware, if they find their systems infected from them.

To protect users from malicious messages, Facebook already has internal scanners which identify spam and prevent user accounts from being hijacked by malware.

When spam are identified, Facebook blocks such accounts for the time being and asked its owners to follow the instructions available on the site which include downloading and running a malware scanner called McAfee Scan and Repair.

The recently launched “malware checkpoints” feature will enable users to recover their infected systems through the lockdown procedure and execute an antivirus scan for free.

User can scan their computers either from McAfee Scan and Repair or with Microsoft Security Essentials, but before that they need to download and install them on their systems.

“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,” Facebook’s security team said in a blog post.

This new feature is extremely helpful for users to act proactively and they do not need to wait for Facebook’s automated scanners to detect a threat.

For those users who will use McAfee Scan and Repair checkpoint they won’t be able to access their account until the malware scan is done. For users’ ease, the scan progress will be displayed on Facebook’s website.

On the other hand, if users go for Microsoft Security Essentials option they need to manually certify that they have downloaded, installed and carried out a scan with the antivirus program before their account is unlocked.

For Mac OS X users, a link will be placed on Apple’s support website, so they can download security updates and all the related tools which help in removing malware.

According to Facebook security team, the initiative is taken to help its users to secure their data and devices.