Facebook partners with Kaspersky to boost security

PanARMENIAN.Net - Facebook has agreed a partnership with Kaspersky Lab that will tackle malicious threats on the world's largest social network, as well as offer free security software to users, Digital Spy said.

Kaspersky will supply up-to-the-minute data about the latest software threats to Facebook. This will be used by the social network to protect its users from "inadvertently visiting malicious web pages".

People are known to be more likely to share a link supplied by a friend, and cyber-criminals prey upon this trust to spread malicious URLs throughout a victim's personal contacts without their knowledge.

But now, when Facebook users share or click on a link shared by their friends, it will instantly be compared against Kaspersky Lab's database of malicious web pages.

If the link matches Facebook's list of known 'bad' URLs, then the user will be immediately notified and blocked from visiting the web page.

This will prevent the user's personal information and computer from being put at risk, and stop the malicious link from spreading further.

Kaspersky Lab's team of more than 800 anti-malware experts can analyse 125,000 threats every day.

Facebook has agreed similar security partnerships with Avast, AVG, Avira, Panda, Total Defence, and Webroot, who will all provide software for its Antivirus Marketplace and add to its URL blacklist.