14 DAY TRIAL // The author of the mysterious "Fan Check" Facebook application, that was the subject of intense controversy during the past week, has stepped forth to defend his creation. The developer stresses that the application does not contain malware and Facebook confirms his claim.
Two days ago, we reported that Fan Check, a Facebook application suspected of containing a virus, was at the center of a black hat SEO campaign that resulted in search results being poisoned with malicious links. Security experts were unable to confirm the nature of the application at the time, as it had already been taken offline.
Janakan Arulkumarasan, a developer based in Hong Kong and the author of "Fan Check" says that his application is clean and safe. "FanCheck is NOT a malicious app. Unfortunately, some malicious developers have been spreading a lie that it is - and encouraging people to download fake virus scanning software, which damages their computer. This is very unfortunate, but it has nothing to do with us," he stated.
According to NetworkWorld, a Facebook official confirmed that the application had been reviewed and that it contained no malware. However, Facebook did ask the developer to reformulate the app's description in order to clearly reflect that it does not collect information about passive profile visitors, which would have been a violation of the site's guidelines.
The Fan Check application monitors interactions on a user's wall in order to determine who their most active friends (fans) are. "Interactions counted include wall posts, comments, likes, gifts and other public items posted to your wall," the new description reads. This does not consist a breach of privacy, because unlike silent visitors who browse a profile anonymously, the authors of wall interactions are clearly identified on the website.
As for Fan Check's recent downtime goes, it was not caused by Facebook, but it was Mr. Arulkumarasan's decision. He explains that the application's sudden and unexpected rise in popularity since it was launched in July resulted in bandwidth problems. According to the developer, at its peak, the application had 12.5 million monthly active users and the traffic ended up costing him over $1,000 per day. This problem has been addressed in the new version by changing the technology from Flash to HTML.