Facebook Getting Aggressive With 'Wall Spam'

“Wall spam” has gone from minor annoyance to publicity problem for Facebook, and it seems the social-networking giant is getting more aggressive in its attempts to combat it, reports Caroline McCarthy in CNET. Within 2 hours of receiving a spam post yesterday, McCarthy found it had been deleted by Facebook. Until recently, the site has merely been disabling links in suspected messages.

It’s unclear whether the post was deleted automatically or because another user flagged it. And it still took an hour or so for the message to disappear, which is plenty of time for a virus to do some damage. Wall spam’s profile rose this month when security firms started noting worms that were spreading through Facebook. (More spam stories.)