Be careful of malicious Facebook applications

Sometimes I get invited to install apps on my Facebook and it always makes me wonder when I see the amount of data that they are about to get hold of. I normally quit out at that stage and decline the offer. So today I decided to have a look around, do some research, and find out the dilly-o on Facebook app security.

It turns out that is now possible to check if an app has been approved by Facebook (see the last two links).

So here are somefairly eye-opening articles about how dodgy Facebook Apps can be:

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/how_safe_are_facebook_applications.php

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koobface

http://us.trendmicro.com/imperia/md/content/us/trendwatch/researchandanalysis/the_real_face_of_koobface_jul2009.pdf

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/010308-facebook-secret-crush.html

To the credit of Facebook however, they do now have a "Verified Application" program, which you can read about here:

http://developers.facebook.com/news.php?blog=1&story=247

So this is good, and you can find if an app you want to install is verified or not by searching on its name. I did a search for Farmville, an app that I have used in the past, and noticed it does not contain a tick of approval. Luckily for me, I run this on a Mac so nothing bad has happened so far, but it does make me pretty weary of Facebook apps still. FB have done a good job but they need to do a little more I reckon.

The new App Directory is located at:

http://www.facebook.com/apps/directory.php