Looking to clamp down on the escalation of malicious apps on its popular social network, Facebook will now require that every developer to verify their Facebook account by providing a mobile phone number or adding a credit card to their account.
While this is clearly a step in the right direction, this won’t stop rogue apps from wreaking havoc on the social network.
Here’s the news from Facebook’s Niket Biswas:
Starting this week, we are requiring every developer to verify his or her Facebook account to create new applications. This is the same quick process that users go through when they want to do things like upload large videos.
We’re taking this step to preserve the integrity of Facebook Platform, ensuring that every application is associated with a valid and real Facebook account.
You can verify your account by either confirming your mobile phone number or adding a credit card to your account. Facebook will not charge your credit card if you add it to your account.
This will probably help to limit Facebook’s problems with nuisance apps but the criminals behind for-profit malware apps will find a way around this roadblock easily. For starters, they already have access to stolen credit card credentials and will use those without thinking twice.
The verified mobile phone number is always just a small deterrent but with easy access to disposable pre-paid cellphone accounts, there’s an easy end-around here as well.
Instead of these minor roadblocks, Facebook needs to implement some sort of code signing or code inspection process for every app that’s submitted to its platform.
