Facebook Partners with Anti-Virus Companies

Facebook has now opened its AV Marketplace, a new page for free six-month trials of anti-virus software.

"We also provide extensive controls, resources and tools to all of you, so that you can better protect your account. In addition, we work with industry leaders to cooperate on important safety and security issues. That’s why we’re thrilled to announce the Antivirus Marketplace and welcome Microsoft, McAfee, Trend Micro, Sophos, and Symantec to the Facebook Security family," Facebook Security wrote on its blog. "We believe that arming our users with antivirus software will help empower them to stay safe no matter where they are on the web."

Facebook's URL blacklist is extensive and created with the help of a multitude of anti-virus software companies. It also cross-checks 300 million images a day with federal and international databases of exploitative images. Despite only dealing with only 4 percent of spam and malware, Facebook reported that it oversees 600,000 compromised accounts each day.

The new AV Marketplace could be a win-win for Facebook if it gets a URL blacklist from each security company for just providing their trials to its 901 million users. Access to the users may also be worth handing over the information. The free trials aren't a bad thing for Facebook users, but users would have to be naive not to think the free trials are aren't being provided in hopes that a few million of them would buy the software.

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