In order to fight off the increasing threats of hackers and computer viruses on the social network, Facebook has announced that it will be offering free computer security software for six months to all of the network’s 350 million members.

To do this, Facebook has signed a deal with the famous anti-virus maker McAfee Inc. of Santa Clara to supply the security software.

The Software will be available for free for the first six months, after which it will be available with a special discount subscription. The later subscription amount has not been defined as yet, though Facebook has claimed that it would not receive any profit from the subscriptions.

The best thing is that Facebook has also installed custom McAfee software for its members, who have been identified as having an infected computer. Such identified members will have to run a free security tool, cleaning up their computers before they are allowed to log back on to Facebook.

According to Elliot Schrage, who is the vice president of Facebook global communications, marketing and public policy, “By partnering with a market leader like McAfee, we are taking an unprecedented step towards making the entire Internet more secure and reducing the possibility of threats being brought onto our service by unsuspecting users,”.

The increasing number of users on social networks like Facebook, has made these sites a perfect target for computer worms like the Koobface virus.

Last October, Facebook won a $711 million judgment in a suit against “Spam King” Sanford Wallace, who supposedly acquired member login information to send spam messages that linked to phishing Web sites.

The new security software will be available to members in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, France, Canada, Mexico and Brazil, with the addition of more countries during the first quarter of 2010.