Have you heard of the Fan Check app on Facebook?
It is a downloadable application that allows you to monitor which of your friends are commenting most on your photos or wall and it will place them in order according to who has commented the most.
Recently, however, concerns over Fan Check have been surfacing, namely that it may be a virus.
If you search Google then there are a great many reports about Facebook users who claim that Fan Check has in some way hacked their accounts and led to unsolicited messages being sent to their friends and other contacts.
On Facebook itself there are groups who are warning other users about the app and asking for it to be banned.
PC World has said -
‘Malicious hackers are setting up malware-infested Web sites that falsely claim to remove a virus from a new Facebook application called Fan Check, security vendor Sophos is warning…. Facebook members use popular search engines to find antivirus information about Fan Check, they are getting results that point to sites that can infect their computers with malware.’
The creator of the application – Janakan Arulkumarasa – has responded by saying that -
‘it is NOT a malicious app.
Unfortunately, some malicious developers have been spreading a lie that it is – and encouraging people to download fake virus scanning software, which damages their computer.
This is very unfortunate, but has nothing to do with us.’
Despite such reassurances from the developer, the number of users of Fan Check quickly dropped from over 12 million to under 7 million.
To my mind it seems like the application itself is probably sound but there are bogus sites talking about it that contain malware.
If you already have Fan Check installed then there is probably no need to panic but, as ever, be careful about what you click on elsewhere on the internet.
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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
facebook has set up the malicious developers for fake virus software to say that because the fan check app isn’t allowed by the facebook terms (says it’s not allowed to count posts)
Sorry, I’m not sure I understand what you mean.
I feel sorry for the creator as I imagine he must have put a lot of time into his work.
Yeah that would be my first thought too Mike. If the app itself is clean then that guy has had a lot of hard work undone.