Facebook seems to have little interest in protecting its users from a huge flow of common scam/spam. Sure they do get active when accounts are mass hacked, and I havn't seen a "Facebook virus" for some time. Their JavaScript filtering is pretty neat, and they have implemented dereferrer pages they can use to quickly stop URLs from spreading.

However, some of my friends keep on joining very dubious groups and installing very dubios applications. No wonder "FarmVille" is sometime nicknamed "ScamVille". There still is a lot of money to make in dubious ways.

The big problem with Facebook is that everyone can set up groups and applications that look like they might be real. This is why people keep on installing "Mafia wars gifts" applications that have nothing to do with the actual game except the name. And sometimes not even realize they don't actually get these gifts in the real game.

Even worse are the "pimp" groups. It's a classic pyramid scheme. Invite all your friends to the group, then you get extra Mafia points. Facebook really needs to stop that.

A quick search for "invite proof" - these groups usually require you to post "proof" of having invited all your friends - turns up 246 groups, almost all of which promise you Mafia stuff.

Searching for "getElementsByTagName" in Facebook turns up "over 500" groups. This string is a JavaScript command commonly used to auto-invite all your friends to a group. A typical mass-spread group will use this in its "join instructions".

Facebook needs to combat this kind of spam/scam. And it's not too hard. Just actually check user complaints/reports, do simple searches like the ones I posted above, and have some employee go through them and just delete all these dubious mass-join groups. Pyramid schemes likely violate the Facebook TOS, and they definitely are illegal in at least Germany.