Facebook users call for application “walled garden” to protect against attacks

What many folks don’t realise is that Facebook is much more than a social networking website, it’s a platform with over half a million active applications running upon it.

Inevitably some of these third-party applications are written with malicious intent – designed to steal information, spread virally, or spam unsuspecting Facebook users. Anyone can write a Facebook application, and it can be made available to the site’s over 500+ million users without any vetting by Facebook’s security team.

So, it’s no wonder we see so many malicious attacks by rogue Facebook apps every day.

Last week, I asked a simple question of our blog readers

Should Facebook follow Apple’s example, and have a “walled garden”, verifying all apps?

and the response was a resounding “Yes”.

I’d love to see Facebook to follow the example set by Apple when governing the iOS App Store. Apple…

Read more in my article on the Naked Security website.

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Graham Cluley •   @gcluley

Graham Cluley is a veteran of the anti-virus industry having worked for a number of security companies since the early 1990s when he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows. Now an independent security analyst, he regularly makes media appearances and is an international public speaker on the topic of computer security, hackers, and online privacy. Follow him on Twitter at @gcluley, on Mastodon at @[email protected], or drop him an email.