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Facebook has struggled to stem an increase in opportunist scams. Photograph: Dale O'Dell / Alamy/Alamy
Facebook has hired a leading web security firm to help combat a continuing rise in malware on the social network in the past year.
Users of the world's biggest social network will be warned not to follow links posted on the site which lead to locations known to harbour malware, as part of the partnership with US security firm Websense.
Another web security firm, Symantec, said in its annual report in April that malicious links accounted for two-thirds of all shortened links on social networks in 2010, & that almost nine in 10 of them had been clicked at least once.
While Facebook has grown exponentially, it has also struggled to stem an increase in opportunist scams that target the site's 800 million users. Attacks range from tricking users into revealing their password to more serious attempts to extort money from people using plausible-sounding email addresses via information gleaned from their profile pages.
One of the biggest threats on Facebook is shortened links that could unwittingly take users to websites that could infect their computers with viruses. Websense says it will vet out shortened links that hide viruses in "real time", warning users against visiting the site if it is harmful.
"Facebook cares deeply about protecting users from potentially malicious content on the internet," said Dan Rubinstein, Facebook's product manager for site integrity. "We are excited about our partnership with Websense to provide industry leading tools to help our users protect themselves."
The security firm Sophos reported in July that Facebook was increasingly seen as the "biggest risk" online among users, with 81% of survey respondents voting for the website, up from 60% in 2010. Twitter & Myspace received 8% of the votes in the same study.
Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos, told the Guardian the partnership was not a "significant change of direction" by Facebook, & said his firm sees "a lot of malicious activity" there.
"Certainly I think there's room for Facebook to improve when it comes to fighting spammy & malicious links," he said. "The likes of [Google's] Gmail, [Microsoft's] Hotmail & Yahoo do a pretty good job at blocking most of the spam in the first place – so it would be good to see Facebook offer a similarly mature approach to the problem. One challenge for Facebook is they have a very laissez-faire attitude to what goes on on their network.
"For instance, anyone can become a Facebook developer & apps are not vetted, which is one avenue for criminals to earn income & access users' personal information."
In May, Facebook announced a similar partnership with the online security firm Web of Trust, whose chief executive Vesa Perala told the Guardian: "Websense work on the traditional technical security, which is quite different compared to what we are doing."
She added: "We know that Facebook is using multiple sources for different purposes. According to my understanding they have two major data providers: McAfee on the anti-virus area & [Web of Trust] in the area of reputation & trustworthiness but are using 'bits & pieces' from other sources as well.
"WOT [Web of Trust] is unique as we combine data from trusted sources (including multiple anti-virus companies & other organisations fighting cyber crime) with real experiences from real users (WOT community of over 25 million users), who rate websites using our safe surfing tools."
Carl Leonard, senior manager of security research at Websense, described Web of Trust as a "very different" system to the real-time Websense technology, which will be integrated into the site from Monday.
He said: "[Web of Trust] is a community-powered free protection system. Users of the tool essentially rate websites in how safe they think they are ... Websense uses the most advanced data identification, content classification, & security filtering available to lessen risks to customer data & productivity."
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