If you’re on facebook, then by now you’ve probably heard the hype about the Facebook Fan Check application, and the fact that it could contain a virus.
To find out more, I turned to one of my favourite sources of news, Mashable - who seem to be saying that it’s not so much the app itself that has a virus, but the emails and sites claiming to be able to fix it. Confused yet?
All I know is that until I removed the app, de-fanned it and detagged myself from all photos I was in, my Facebook friends feed was back to normal. Prior to that it was only showing old updates, and people were in the wrong categories.
So, I would suggest that if your feed is going screwy, you:
- Block the Facebook Fan Check application – you should be able to find it by searching for ‘fan check’ in the search box on your profile (or use this link http://www.facebook.com/fancheck?v=feed&story_fbid=231758205581&ref=mf )
- Remove yourself from the page’s fans list
- Visit any pictures that have tagged you and detag yourself
- Log out of Facebook
- Log back in
This worked for us, and the handful of clients who have asked for our help.
So, does the Facebook Fan Check application contain a virus? I honestly don’t know – I can’t see that it would have been accepted by Facebook if it had, but I guess stranger things have happened. All I know is that it does seem to affect the feed of people using it (unless the timing is a massive coincidence!) and removing it fixes that problem.
I’ll err on the safe side and stay away from it 
UPDATE: It appears that people who have had nothing to do with Fan Check have had Facebook feed problems too, so the plot thickens – I’m keeping it blocked though
UPDATE 2: Here’s Snopes’ take on it: http://urbanlegends.about.com/b/2009/09/14/about-that-alleged-fan-check-application-virus-on-facebook.htm
Nikki, I know nothing about this particular app, but Facebook doesn’t do anything directly to ensure that apps don’t contain viruses. Instead the API tries to prevent malicious behaviour by limiting what apps can do. If someone finds a security hole in the API then apps can exploit it until it’s closed.
Another possibility is that a bug in the Facebook API might have caused this app to appear to misbehave even though it was entirely innocent.
Don’t know if it’s related, but I had the symptoms you describe (WRT the feeds) yesterday evening and I’d not done anything related to FanCheck at that point.
S
Thanks guys – other people have said they had similar problems but hadn’t had anything to do with the Fan Check app, so maybe it’s all just a coincidence. I wonder if we’ll ever find out?
I had the feed problems (things being out of order and showing old posts and some error message when trying to leave a comment) long before I was tagged or used Fancheck. I havent recieved any different messages since being tagged or since using Fancheck that I didnt get before.