If you are a fan of FrontierVille, you may be tempted to allow access to a new app called Frontier Helper. Don’t.

The application, developed by TopFBGames.com, is highly suspect and is virally making its rounds to players news feeds. Like most of these deceptive apps, it promises “100′s of neighbors in minutes”, bigger homesteads faster, free FrontierVille gifts and even “Free animals to adopt using our secret FrontierVille link”. The last promise is quite amusing, since animal adoptions are not yet a part of FrontierVille play.

The tempting news feed post looks like the following:

Once you click the link to find out more, you are taken to a Facebook app page full of RockYou temptations. Buried inside these, you will find the details of the toolbar/group called Frontier Helper:

Once you click “get the Frontier Helper Toolbar” box, you will be prompted to allow the application access to your profile and the ability to post to your wall.

If you allow permissions to Frontier Helper, the application silently posts numerous status updates to your friends encouraging them to also install the app.

These numerous status updates, with a pre-populated message claiming that “hey this really works”, is the root cause of the app spreading rapidly. Within my own news feed, I have noted the status updates appearing from the same friend as close as 2 minutes apart, and six times within 1 hour.

Any application that hijacks your status updates this often, and pre-populates one of those scammy “hey this works” messages, should be highly suspect.

How To Remove Frontier Helper

If you have already allowed access to Frontier Helper, you will want to go to Account –> Application Settings –> Recently Used and click the x that appears to the right of the Frontier Helper application. You will also want to remove the toolbar from your browser. Reports and reviews are claiming it significantly slows down your browser capabilities, as well as the game. I love FrontierVille, but it certainly does not need any further sluggishness!