It appears Facebook is taking action to shut down ‘back door’ methods used by spammers to take advantage of the social network.
Face Wizard, a piece of software designed to manage a large number of Facebook profiles, was shut down at some point over the past two days. Its website simply reads “This item is no longer for sale”, while users of the service are reporting on a black hat SEO forum that the software has stopped working. Rumours point to Facebook issuing a Cease and Desist order against the software’s developer.
A review of Face Wizard from March this year describes it as the ideal tool for updating “hundreds” of Facebook accounts..
“Face Wizard is a Facebook bot that stimulates a real human being. This tool allows you to build up your fake Facebook user accounts and then go market your idea with status updates and wall post.
Face Wizard can scrape through a fan page and gather tons of Facebook User ID’s. You can then send them a friend request with a click a button. This way if you are in a Sports Fan Page, you receive thousands of highly targeted prospects.”
This site, which may be a mirror of the now non-functioning FaceWizard.com, lists the software’s features in more detail. These include the ability to update the status of many accounts without having to login to each individually and to remotely comment on Page posts. The site notes: “In some niches such as Farmville etc simply posting ‘add me’ on a fans page status update can gain you thousands of new friends in a matter of hours.” The software even supported use of proxy IP numbers to help keep under Facebook’s radar. In short, Face Wizard, which sold for $249, was a Facebook spammer’s dream.
So, has Facebook blocked Face Wizard? The apparent sudden disappearance of the service would lead us to believe so. It follows a similarly sudden blocking earlier this week of a small piece of Javascript that allowed Facebook users to invite all their friends to a Group or Event, something popular with spammers but that Facebook’s design currently doesn’t allow.
When you’re top dog in the social network market, you’re also the biggest target for spam. TechCrunch published a guest post last year which exposed some of the ways marketers get around Facebook’s anti-spam controls. Facebook has been fighting back via a number of means including the ability to report friend requests from people you don’t know and even through lawsuits against significant spammers.
We have had a query lodged with Facebook since Thursday over whether the blocking of the Javascript code was a deliberate security measure on their part. We will let you know if we hear back from them with their side of the story on both that and the Face Wizard shutdown.
UPDATE: Facebook haven’t sent us a comment on FaceWizard, however they did send us the following regarding the Javascript block:
“We’re always working to reduce spam, and we invest heavily in systems to protect our users from annoying or unwanted contacts. Groups and Pages that encourage people to use javascript to invite all of their friends at once violate our policies for spam, and we remove them when they’re reported to us or detected by our systems. We’re also testing measures to proactively block invitations that are sent in this way.”
Facebook seems to have the weight of the flood of messages with viruses that infest the Internet. With over 350 million monthly active users worldwide, Facebook has many users who want to make new friends.
Hurghada holidays
What about he same bot like FAcebook FriendAdder Pro?
The guy who runs it is from China, so he feels that FB cannot touch him. is that true
What about the same bot like Facewizard, FAcebook FriendAdder Pro?
The guy who runs it is from China, so he feels that FB cannot touch him. is that true
I have noticed that I cannot send out event invitations to members of my group either. Maybe in shutting down this other javascript they shut down their own feature, invite members to groups. I have been surfing for days trying to find any solutions and have found none. There are lots of ways to tick all of the names of friends in a list to speed up that process, but no way to invite members (who may or may not be friends)
Facebook’s so called anti-spam mechanism is preventing many users from adding friends by blocking or disabling the feature when the bot determines that you are adding too fast. Yet, they do not specify how fast or how many friends you can add! Most people who are caught in this anti-spam web are NOT spammers but just regular people trying to add, friends, family, coworkers, classmates, fellow game players etc…. Facebook support is not responding to this issue. We need media coverage ASAP. Here is where users with this problem are congregating
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Stop-blocking-me-for-adding-friends-you-suggested-Facebook/127620077272467
Facebook Slamming The Back Door On Spammers? adley@gigemail.net
It’s interesting because on one hand Facebook says that it doesn’t want business users making use of the site to increase market reach. Fair enough. But on the other hand, Facebook encourages businesses to set up “Pages” and recruit fans from their own external contact databases.
In a perverse way, Facebook is reverse spamming. They’re making it really easy and appealing for me to hand over my contact list to them (in the form of friends and fans) and then they punish me for contacting my fans/friends through the social network.
It’s frustrating because most of us want to play fair and abide by the rules. We at The Dating Commando ( http://www.dating-commando.com ) or search for us on Facebook, spend hundreds of dollars a week trying to promote ourselves through FB ads which result in very low CTR’s. Yet I see competitors who cheat the system, don’t spend a penny and have hundreds of thousands of followers. It kind of makes you wonder if you should play fair or play smart.
So sad to see Face Wizard gone. Friend adder pro is weak and spams. You will be detected easily. Well, wizard was good while it lasted. If someone knows of a good program please let us know. Until then, welcome to manual submissions!