Facebook's Mandatory Malware Scan Is an Intrusive Mess

The next election will be extremely vulnerable to attacks

Posted by Emotify on Feb 17, 2018

WHEN AN OREGON science fiction writer named Charity tried to log onto Facebook on February 11, she found herself completely locked out of her account. A message appeared saying she needed to download Facebook’s malware scanner if she wanted to get back in. Charity couldn’t use Facebook until she completed the scan, but the file the company provided was for a Windows device—Charity uses a Mac.

“I could not actually run the software they were demanding I download and use,” she says. When she tried instead to log in from her computer at work, Facebook greeted her with the same roadblock. “Obviously there is no way for Facebook to know if my device is infected with anything, since this same message appeared on any computer I tried to access my account from,” says Charity.

The dreams of yesterday are the hopes of today and the reality of tomorrow. Science has not yet mastered prophecy. We predict too much for the next year and yet far too little for the next ten.

On Wednesday, the creators of Signal announced the launch of the Signal Foundation, which will build and maintain Signal and potentially other privacy-focused apps to come, too. WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton has also joined as the foundation's executive chairman, his first new role since leaving WhatsApp last fall. And Acton's not only devoting the next phase of his post-WhatsApp career to Signal, but a fair-sized chunk of his WhatsApp billions, too: He's personally injecting $50 million into the project.

The Final Frontier

Here's how it works: Attackers use a taxpayer's stolen identity information to fraudulently file their returns for a refund. They allow that refund to direct deposit into the victim's actual bank account. Then the real fun starts. The scammers—posing as the IRS—call the victim, demanding that they return the wrongfully allocated refunds. Since the victim presumably hasn't yet filed their own taxes, it's easy for them to assume a mistake was made—and send their money to the crook.

Humanity will be treated to a celestial trifecta: A supermoon (meaning it’s relatively close to Earth), but also simultaneously a blood moon (it’ll be orange or red), but also simultaneously a blue moon (the second full moon in one calendar month) will pass in the shadow of Earth, for a total lunar eclipse. It’s going to be righteous.

But supermoon? Blue moon? Blood moon? Yeah, let’s go ahead and pump the brakes on those terms, because the first was created by an astrologer, the second is highly subjective, and the third was only recently popularized by this-must-be-prophecy types.

But supermoon? Blue moon? Blood moon? Yeah, let’s go ahead and pump the brakes on those terms, because the first was created by an astrologer, the second is highly subjective, and the third was only recently popularized by this-must-be-prophecy types.