Facebook Antivirus Marketplace Offers Protection

There's nothing like a good reminder that computing isn't always safe, and Facebook, McAfee, Norton and others have done just that today with their new "Antivirus Marketplace." This new section of Facebook has taken the safety of your computer – not just on the web, but everywhere, to a new level with free downloads of McAfee software directly from your Facebook page. This is cross-branding at it's best, ladies and gentlemen, let's have a look.

This page will pop up for your in the Facebook Security section of your Facebook homepage and will, as you can see below, offer you several McAfee-branded virus protection software downloads as well as other brands of similarly situated applications. The basic McAfee Internet Security software is the first download you'll see in the "AV Marketplace" and will offer you 6 months of service for free. Like all temporarily free software, you'll then have to begin paying cash to keep it around.

Facebook's AV Marketplace will also include such names as Microsoft, McAfee, Trend Micro, Sophos and Symantec, each of whom will soon augment Facebook's URL blacklist system with their own URL blacklist database to keep viruses from you. Keep in mind the new Facebook CISPA support and see how this rings a bell with that. They're speaking about sharing information with other websites and the government as fast as possible in the name of security, letting each-other know the names and information on virus and hacker-related entities found on any of their networks.

See what you make of it! And head over to the Antivirus Marketplace on Facebook now to see if you need any new software for your computer. Remind yourself that its only temporarily free again, and again, and again.

[via Facebook]