Vidyartha College: Facebook Virus or Exploit? Or Just a Glitch?

If you've checked your friends list on Facebook recently, you may have had this thought cross your mind: "I had no idea so many of my friends went to Vidyartha College. As you may have noticed, many of your Facebook friends are listed as being part of a "Vidyartha College" network. So what exactly is going on? Is "Vidyartha College" a Facebook virus, an exploit, a minor technical glitch or did Vidyartha College just boost its enrolment dramatically and you just weren't aware of it?

Thus far, Facebook has yet to make an official comment on the "Vidyartha College" bug on its blog or elsewhere. It appears that users have not suffered any serious consequences such as data loss. This isn't the first time that Facebook has suffered from such a glitch. In the past, some users appeared to have been affiliated with Harvard University (a slightly more prestigious school than Vidyartha College. No offense to all you Vidyartha alumni out there)

While viruses are a real concern on social networking sites, it looks like the Vidyartha College glitch doesn't meet the definition of a virus since it's not a small program that can be downloaded and executed without a user's knowledge.

That's not to say that there is no need for concern. The Facebook Vidyartha College issue could be an exploit or worm that has impacted the Facebook site itself. While there may not be any direct impact on a user's machine, it does raise questions about the security of the Facebook site.

So what is Vidyartha College? It turns out to be a post-secondary institution located in Kandy, Sri Lanka.