Facebook is a great application and does have a place in your Technology Strategy (see more about your Technology Strategy below), however, be careful of all those ads! A malicious advertisement has been found within an application for Facebook that redirected users to fake anti-virus software, according to a security researcher.

The banner advertisement for greeting cards was intermittently displayed with an application called Farm Town, which has more than 9 million monthly users according to information published on Facebook.

If the bad advertisement was displayed, the user was redirected from Facebook through several domains and ended up on a Web site selling fake anti-virus software, said Sandi Hardmeier, who studies malicious advertisements and blogged about the issue.

The bad advertisement has since been pulled but heads up: It was placed there by what appeared to be a legitimate advertising company!

Fake anti-virus sites usually tell users their computers are infected and implore them to download the software, which is often completely ineffective. Consumers are charged as much as US$70 for the software, which is also difficult to remove, and have trouble recovering their money.

There are hundreds of fake anti-virus programs, and security experts estimate it is a multimillion dollar industry. Panda Security wrote in a report last year that as many as 35 million computers worldwide may be infected with fake anti-virus programs each month.

As SmallBizWebServices has blogged over and over, be careful where you surf and keep your Computer and Anti-Virus tools up to date.

We discuss Technology Strategies in our recent Newsletter. Go to our Home Page here and then select the Spring 2010 Issue under the News !

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