Shame on Facebook and McAfee

Posted on June 6, 2011 by sqedmonton

So I was using Facebook and suddenly I get a message from Facebook saying I have a virus and my account has been blocked. SO I go through the steps to verify my identity but the 3rd step wants me to download MacAfee’s virus scanning product. this is what it says:”

Step 1

Verify Account
Step 2

Education
Step 3

Scan And Repair
Step 4

Change Password
Step 5

Restore Account

McAfee Scan and Repair

We’re pleased to offer McAfee Scan and Repair to you at no charge. If any infected files are found, McAfee Scan and Repair can remove them for you automatically. If you prefer, you can also remove them yourself.

By clicking this button, you are agreeing to the McAfee Scan and Repair terms of service.”

Now notice the text says “If you prefer, you can also remove them yourself.” So preferring to use products I know and trust I did three deep scans of my system with three reputable products that found no virus on my computer. One of the scans was in windows safe mode. I also examined my registry and my cleaned all my caches and uninstalled and reinstalled my browsers Chrome and Firefox.

Now you might think this was a fairly vigorous checking of my computer for viruses. I would agree with you. But Facebook does not and still wants me to install a product that I do not trust-McAfee – even though their text on their website says “If you prefer, you can also remove them yourself.” This is obviously not the case and as Facebook has a business relationship with McAfee, my wants are irrelevant to its pushing their partner product.

This is a shoddy way to do business and a horrible way to work with your users who have taken every measure to ensure that their machine is not infected by a virus except use your partner product . No where in the 5 steps does Facebook offer an alternative to their partner product. This can only mean one thing. It can only mean that Facebook is completely disinterested in your wants and is only interested in ensuring they get the fee for every download and installation of MacAfee. This makes Facebook no better than the shady websites that tell you you have a virus and try to trick an unwary user into downloading a software – usually spyware – that they do not want.

Shame on Facebook and shame on MacAfee for such unscrupulous tactics and forcing on users an unreasonable demand. I feel especially sorry for those out there without the technical awareness to realize they are being duped and having possibly conflicting anti-virus programs on their system.

37 thoughts on “Shame on Facebook and McAfee”

Steve on June 10, 2011 at 9:30 am said:

What did you ultimately do? I have the same problem, same frustration, and don’t know what to do about it, other than abandon Facebook.

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- sqedmonton1 on June 12, 2011 at 2:44 pm said:
  
  Hey Steve, I finally had to log in on my mac and i had to click “my mac is secure” and it let me in. But on windows it’s a nightmare. Hope you figure it out
  
  CR
  
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- sqedmonton on June 12, 2011 at 9:17 pm said:
  
  Steve – I logged on to Facebook on my mac and didn’t have to go through the download bs like i did on my windows machine.
  
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  - Cathy on December 17, 2011 at 1:29 pm said:
    
    Funny, my husband is using the same computer and is on facebook with no problem.
Frank on December 17, 2011 at 4:26 pm said:

I Definetly agree with you, what a scam, nothing is wrong with my account, as my wife and my kids they all have Facebook accounts in the same computer with no problems, as a matter of fact I do have Norton antivirus in my computer and I have runned a full scan (with no problems being reported), installing McAfee would just screw up my computer.
I think this is just a scam to force McAfee on to customers. Shame on Facebook.

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Christine Charland on December 17, 2011 at 8:15 pm said:

I’m so F#$%king mad!!! I will not use My Facebook until they take McAffee off it. I REFUSE to have a program shoved up my A$$,,,,,

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gordon newton on December 18, 2011 at 5:48 am said:

so are we saying that we have to down load mcafee or lose facebook ? if so bye bye facebook as am not screwing my comp up just to go on f/b

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Melissa on December 20, 2011 at 9:06 pm said:

well then….bye facebook!

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- nadine on July 3, 2012 at 1:51 am said:
  
  Exact same situation happened to me.
  
  From the blog on the McAfee site:
  
  “Facebook is one of the most popular sites on the Internet, and today McAfee and Facebook announced an unprecedented partnership that’s a great benefit for Facebook users. We believe this unique collaboration is a step in the right direction — using technology and education — to secure the Internet as a whole and reduce global cybercrime.
  First, Facebook users will be eligible to receive a complimentary six-month subscription to McAfee® Internet Security Suite available to its users………….”
  
  Ha! A complimentary 6 month subscription? How thoughtful of McAfee! And then after that we’re supposed to start paying them to use FaceBook?
  
  It’s clear that the recent purchase of FB was with the intent to (try) profit from it’s users.
  Corporate greed? Hummmmm….not so popular any more McAfee.
  
  FACEBOOK IS DEAD.
  
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- Jesse on July 3, 2012 at 4:59 pm said:
  
  I had the dreaded monster show up on my screen this morning and tried several things to no avail. Logged on to Facebook from another computer. Success. Logged on my smart phone. Success. Just my laptop was giving problems. Logged on using IE instead of Firefox and Success again. Went to Options in the Firefox browser and deleted the firefox cookie and the logged on. Success. No downloading something I didn’t want. I already have a good antivirus maleware program that runs every day. Hope this helps.
  
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Kevin Hurd on July 3, 2012 at 1:14 am said:

http://www.facebook.com/help/contact/?id=274459462613911

This a link that I used through facebook to report “them” (facebook) for a violation. I used their url in the form. I can only hope this works because the same thing has happened to my account. But not other members in my home. This is facebook BS!

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Aj on July 3, 2012 at 1:42 am said:

fucking facebook…go to hell..y should I pay for macfee when I have free AVG for lifetime

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Ashish Ranjan on July 3, 2012 at 6:19 am said:

i am not able to use Facebook.it shows that your accnt. have virus & i am not able to McAfee Scan and Repair.so plz help me….

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Rebecca on July 3, 2012 at 8:47 am said:

leave your comment to FB here http://www.facebook.com/help/contact/?id=357439354283890

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Titas on July 3, 2012 at 10:20 am said:

Having same problem where other users can access it from same pc. Just waiting for their scam to go off. Mcfree scan well but then stuck on the page “Analyzing results of scan. Please stay on this page until the scan is finished”. And now, whoa, tried with Google Chrome and able to log in… Dunno what the hell going on.
P.S: I was using Mozilla Firefox so long.

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Jennifer Jackson on July 3, 2012 at 11:10 am said:

I just now received this message. McAfee was causing me all sorts of problems on my computer onceI installed Kaspersky. I finally deinstalled everything and it’s been working fine now. I did a full scann with Kaspersky and I had not one thing wrong. I guess I’m SOL as I refuse to reinstall Mcafee again. I searched and searched and there is NO way to even email Facebook to ask them what alternatives they have. Bye bye facebook… It’s a shame because I had contacted so many of my school classmates and now I can’t even retrieve my messages to/from them. I don’t know what else I can do but I know that installing McAfee is asking for all kinds of trouble for me. Been there, done that.

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- Tracy Meisinger on February 18, 2013 at 12:08 pm said:
  
  I did find a way to contact FB … you can’t do it without an account. (The irony, it burns!) So I opened up a new account to find a way to contact FB. It’s just layers under the “HELP” tab. Layers and layers deep. I told them I wanted my account unlocked in no uncertain terms. We’ll see what happens.
  
  Funny, I opened a new FB account on the same computer and got no virus warning. Fascinating. My Norton scan revealed no viruses either. There is no virus. There is just blackmail.
  
  I have thousands of family photos on my original FB page and I am not giving up. I will not give in to extortionists.
  
  And I boosted the signal on this by writing to George Takei. (I read his book about the Internet and FB) He has a hotline to FB and if anyone can influence change, it’s him.
  
  Meanwhile, I deleted cookies, changed passwords, sacrificed a chicken, did a voodoo dance, and still cannot access my original account.
  
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maaz on July 3, 2012 at 5:16 pm said:

same here! i can not get access to my account and installation is taking forever… arrrrghhhh i hate it.

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Richard on July 4, 2012 at 12:43 pm said:

I agree, Frank. I already have one antivirus program on my computer and see no reason to purchase another just to access fb. It seems to me to be quite a chicken shit way of doing business.

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musingmartian on July 4, 2012 at 10:56 pm said:

Reblogged this on musingmartian and commented:
Same thing happening to me now.

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kushal on July 6, 2012 at 7:06 am said:

I was addicted to facebook until now. Thank you facebook for staying away from me

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kinneroth on July 6, 2012 at 8:00 pm said:

What it tries to make you download is the setup software. This won’t put McAfee on your comp unless you actually run the setup program they made you download. Just delete the setup after you download it without actually running it. Then go back one page, which you will have to resubmit. Because it’ll tell you to. You have now fooled Facebook into thinking you downloaded McAfee, and you can click the home button and enjoy Facebook again. Hope this helps.

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- musingmartian on July 7, 2012 at 9:56 pm said:
  
  Hey, I tried this but it didn’t work
  
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- musingmartian on July 7, 2012 at 9:57 pm said:
  
  If it’s relevant, I can log in through mozilla, but not chrome.
  
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  - Kinneroth on July 10, 2012 at 1:59 pm said:
    
    This method works with chrome. Not sure about how to bypass with mozilla.
  - musingmartian on July 10, 2012 at 8:20 pm said:
    
    I tried it with chrome, but it’ll just download another setup copy and won’t go anywhere when I press the “facebook” home button. (I’m not having any trouble with mozilla…yet)
MGO on December 29, 2012 at 10:05 pm said:

A VERY EVIL MOVE BY FACEBOOK …WHAT A PITY

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ps on February 17, 2013 at 5:42 pm said:

i got norton from comcast with automatic facebook scan why should i download this when my antivirus is already doing this for me.

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Rich Ries on February 17, 2013 at 5:49 pm said:

They’re at it again! Same McAfee infection lie when I try to log in from my desktop using Mozilla and from my laptop using IE (both are win 7). I have used ZoneAlarm for years and fully trust it when it says my systems are clean. FB and McAfee can both fall down and die as far as I’m concerned.

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CageyT on February 17, 2013 at 6:05 pm said:

Kinneroth’s method worked for me today…

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gwen41 on February 17, 2013 at 6:30 pm said:

It is now February 2013 and they are still at it. I know for a fact I had no viruses on my pc. I did a complete scan yesterday and there were 0 viruses. I could not login to Facebook until I downloaded McAfee and let it scan my pc, they found nothing, no surprise there. I agree, it is a scam for some people to make money out of the fears and gullibility of others.

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Twink on February 17, 2013 at 6:36 pm said:

FaceBook just got me today! I was on earlier, then just tried & it blocked me. Tells me I have to download McAfee. I have Avast that I just paid for in December. I have scanned my pc multiple times with no luck. I just downloaded mozzilla & it already blocked me when I tried to log in to FB. I reported FB to FB about violating my rights. What a crock of shit!

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janice on February 17, 2013 at 6:48 pm said:

Same problem, FB sucks!

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kg on February 17, 2013 at 7:13 pm said:

My son says that is actually a virus u get if u do what it says.

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kee boudi on February 17, 2013 at 7:24 pm said:

just log in with a mac or on your android or iphone and click on ‘I certify that my computer is virus free’ (or similar wording)
There is no way for FB to ‘know’ you have a virus … it just thinks you do by analyzing your posting/upload patterns and taking a guess.
Ramming McAfee down your throat is just plain rude!

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Galen Gulbranson on February 17, 2013 at 7:36 pm said:

I went thru all their steps and ran the McAfee crap and it didn’t find a damn thing, it said my computer was clean, then it let me back into my facebook account… this is certainly a BS tactic to push their partners software. I’m pissed, it took a half hour to run a scan i didn’t need.

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Joy Salt (@joysofglass) on February 17, 2013 at 8:15 pm said:

I unlocked myself using my mobile as it wasn’t able to offer the mcafee download it let me tick a box to say i was clean and that unlocked the account to both my “infected ha ha ha” computers as well.

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