Facebook forces malware scan

[keyplyr]

When opening Facebook, I received a notice that locked me out of my account. To get back in I was forced to install & run Kaspersky Malware Scanner which is hosted and ran at Facebook.

Earlier I had ran Windows Security Essentials with a clean report, so there should have been nothing to trigger Facebook's action.

So now it appears Facebook thinks it has the right to scan our hard drive to see what we have. Is this a fair tradeoff to use Facebook or is it another compromise of our privacy?

[Leosghost]

Just logged into facebook after reading your post..
did not get this "lockout" nor asked to install anything..
..your machine may very well have been /be contaminated by something, and now quite possibly by a fake kaspersky ( and whatver it may have "dropped" )..Windows Security Essentials does not protect 100%..

[keyplyr]

As I said, the scan is being run at FB. This may be random. One of my clients also reported this yesterday.

I went ahead and installed/started the scan. As soon as I did this, FB opened an alert saying I could continue with LogIn and use my account, that I would be alerted again when the scan was completed. I'm back into FB so the scan is authentic.

Kaspersky Malware Scanner is finished and didn't find any malware. These scans help keep Facebook secure, so thanks for your patience.
Remember, to protect your computer from malware, only download and run programs from sources you trust. Learn more.

[edited by: keyplyr at 8:52 pm (utc) on Jul 8, 2015]

[Leosghost]

What is your and client's OS ?

edit..dumb question ..you already told me ;) my excuse "cooking dinner at the same time posting"

Must be a "win thing"..
I'm linux only if it can connect to the internet..all my win stuff is air gapped* ..
So, facebook thinks that scanning user's Win machines with kaspersky keeps facebook safe..? ..Oy..

*Apart from 3 win boxen which have stripped down win7 ent or XP pro on them..in case of problems they can be re-imaged in under 30 minutes..

[keyplyr]

My Firefox browser uses several extensions including adblock plus & facebook ads block. It's possible these triggered the flag. I don't know about my client's browser.

Just discovered I was locked out of the FB Android app connection as well. The alert said "Session Expired" and displayed the LogIn box when I opened the app, which usually just opens to the FB page I left-off with. No problem logging back in, I assume because I ran their scan.

[Leosghost]

Found this..amongst other reports about facebook's "anti-malware" efforts..
[facebook.com...]

For the past year, we've been working with anti-malware companies like ESET, F-Secure, and Trend Micro to offer free malware cleanup software to people who use Facebook. Thanks to the collaboration with these companies, in the past three months we have helped clean up more than 2 million people's computers that we detected were infected with malware when they connected to Facebook.

Plus on that page comments from others who have had scans "forced"..

I don't think that adblockplus and FF would trigger it..( I used that "combo" along with some other extensions when I logged in ) but I suspect that facebook only goes into "tilt" mode when win systems connect..

Facebook itself (AFAIK ) runs on heavily customised linux, CentOS 5.2 ..but is ( or was ) "partially redhat certified"..
[internetnews.com...]
They would hardly need to "keep their system secure" from malware carried by windows users connecting to them..
I would have expected anything that users upload to facebook to be scanned at the facebook end..in case anyone hid anything nasty inside a cat picture..

[keyplyr]

Well as I said, my machine was (and has always been) clean prior to the forced scan, which in turn did not find anything. I consider this a bully type act and a privacy violation. If I didn't pull in thousands of site visitors, I would even use FB.

[bill]

I have not seen that behavior. I did try logging in to FB with a Windows machine using FF before updating the latest Flash. That didn't trigger a scan. Tried with Chrome as well. No scan. I tried some VMs as well with old versions of IE. No scan. Not sure what might have triggered that.

[keyplyr]

Seems to be random, but as the reports show, it is happening to many FB users.

[bill]

I scanned through some of those comments. A lot of them are off-topic or clueless, but there do indeed seem to be some people who are blocked out of their accounts until they do this scan. Not cool.

Are there other WebmasterWorld members who have been affected by this? What are the triggers?

[keyplyr]

There is a FB page where users are complaining about the forced scan. I can't supply link since FB pages resolve to domain root, but the title of the page is: Facebook Security Wrote A New Note Malware Check for Facebook.

[keyplyr]

Read some of the comments from users here: [facebook.com...]

[RedBar]

Strange, no issues here, in fact FB seemed much faster than usual.