With the aim of improving security for Facebook's 350 million users, Facebook and McAfee recently created a partnership.

Under this new relationship, users of Facebook would be offered a free six-month subscription to McAfee’s Internet Security Suite software. However, it just does not end here. A free quick response scan-and-repair service for any new malware threats that appear would also be given McAfee, which will be working closely with Facebook to do this.

McAfee's security contribution merged with Facebook's larger security effort, which now includes an automated process for detecting anomalies in Facebook users' accounts that might indicate malware or hacker attempts.

Under a situation where Facebook finds out that a user has a security-related problem, an automated process gets started and displays screens from Facebook informing the user a remediation process is underway, initially shutting the user out of the account.

Barry Schnitt, director of policy communications at Facebook, “Password changes would be invoked, along with other possible security remediation processes, such as running a malware clean
-up. Phone-based support from Facebook's team could be part of helping the Facebook user get back to normal.”

Schnitt, who feels that very few people have issues with Facebook, said that there is a need to keep pushing harder on security protections as there are social-networking worms such as Koobface on the rise, along with attackers looking to harvest Facebook passwords.