Why would cyber-criminals want to control your Facebook account? At the very least, they could “like” weird things and promote questionable goods and services on your behalf. However, Facebook is well aware of this common criminal scheme and collaborates with us to protect innocent users from account infection.
To protect its users from cybercrime, Facebook recommends a free anti-malware scan to owners of accounts that Facebook’s team has detected as behaving suspiciously and appear to be infected.
Of course, Facebook itself is never the source of malicious software. But one can get infected in many ways. For instance, Facebook is a major target for phishers: 1 in 5 phishing scams target Facebook notifications. For this reason, one should be vigilant when receiving e-mails from this network–they might be fake. Additionally, there are lots of Trojans targeting Facebook users as well.
Fake Facebook account suspension emails currently making rounds in users' inboxes are leading to trojans, ransomware http://t.co/YI8yym1u7R
— Kaspersky (@kaspersky) February 3, 2015
If the Facebook team has detected suspicious behavior from your account and it looks as though it might be infected, the social network will suggest you scan your device for security issues. Upon logging in, you will see a warning page like this, offering the security scan.
One of the programs, which helps to fix Facebook users’ accounts, is our Kaspersky Malware Scan for Facebook. In the last 3 months alone we’ve protected over 260,000 Facebook users. A quick download will generate a scan window like this:
We advise users to be patient and wait for the scan to complete. Any security issues, along with the suggested steps to resolve them, will be displayed upon scan completion.
But forewarned is forearmed. If you happen to see some ‘likes’ that you never clicked or statuses that you never posted, or just suspect that your PC or smartphone might be infected with malware, you can scan your device with a good security solution before the threat of a Facebook account suspension. There is a wide range of free Kaspersky Lab products on free.kaspersky.com.
Kaspersky Lab is ready to protect your #Facebook account! #security #malware
And be sure to have a look at our collection of tips on how to fortify your Facebook account with proper privacy and security settings.