Secret Crush, an applications that we wrote about last week, has been finally shut down. Fortinet has published a report notifying individuals of spyware that would be installed if you used the application. The spyware being installed was for an affiliate program called “Zango cash.” The application was nothing more than a tool for helping spread the spyware. Over 1.5 million individuals installed the software prior to it being removed from the Facebook platform.
This brings up an interesting issue: should there be more restrictions in launching a Facebook app for the public? Ultimately, this application was able to spread virally without being approved for the Facebook application directory. If it was approved for the application directory, there would be an even greater issue that would need to be addressed within the Facebook platform team.
While I don’t think it made it to the directory this time, the application did manage to reach 1.5 million users which is completely unacceptable. Soon enough Facebook may be forced to have greater restrictions for when making an application public. This already was a complete disaster but now Facebook needs to figure out what to do to prevent this in the future. The same problem previously occurred on MySpace advertisements that were eventually banned.
Do you think Facebook should add more restrictions to prevent this from happening again in the future?
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What restrictions could there possibly be? Right now there are none and TOS violations are all prosecuted after-the-fact.Even if you were to, say, charge for API keys a la domain names this wouldn't stop apps like this. This app probably made several thousand, if not tens of thousands, of dollars in the time it was running.As long as the money is there people will find ways to get around any obstacles.
Comment by Jesse Farmer — January 7, 2008 @ 9:28 am
What restrictions could there possibly be? Right now there are none and TOS violations are all prosecuted after-the-fact.
Even if you were to, say, charge for API keys a la domain names this wouldn't stop apps like this. This app probably made several thousand, if not tens of thousands, of dollars in the time it was running.
As long as the money is there people will find ways to get around any obstacles.
Comment by Jesse Farmer — January 7, 2008 @ 10:28 am
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