Well, Zango is at it again, making news with distasteful distribution tactics. They were one of the first groups to get into distributing themselves surreptitiously on MySpace, now they’ve caught on to the growing popularity of Facebook by coupling it with a Facebook App called Secret Crush.

It’s not particularly shocking that this has taken place, it was really just a matter of time given Zango’s previous activities.

My first thought in these situations is how to sum up the situation briefly so it can be used as an explanation how to avoid getting burned by these things. The first problem in this scenario is that it’s sending you to a 3rd-party website to download additional software. This is a huge red flag to me as a security-conscious person, period. But more than that, there’s something much less obviously problematic that really bothers me.

Facebook is quickly becoming full of Apps that require you to send it to X number of friends before you can have their enticing toy. This is, plain and simple, a sleazy social engineering tactic. What do they have to gain by such a scheme? Even if it’s not specifically malware or adware, I avoid these things like the plague. At the very least, I don’t want to be encouraging people to pursue social engineering to achieve App-popularity.

These Socially Transmitted Apps are the Web 2.0 equivalent of Chain Letters and I want no part of it.