Consumer Confidential: Funky Facebook, bad bank apps, scary jewelry

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Here’s your wonderfully Wednesday roundup of consumer news from around the Web:

--Facebook wants users to know they’re safe online. The social-networking site has cut a deal with security-software heavyweight McAfee for the company to scan the computer of anyone whose Facebook account has been compromised. Facebook users will also get a free six-month subscription to McAfee’s security software. After that, you’re on your own. And good luck.

--Be careful if you use your smart phone for mobile banking. A pair of credit unions, Bayport Credit Union in Virginia and First Technology Credit Union in Oregon, are warning customers that seemingly legit banking apps have appeared online that allow scammers to access your wireless transactions. The apps target Google’s Android mobile-phone operating system. You know it’s just a matter of time before enterprising scammers make similar apps available for the iPhone and Blackberry.

--Heads-up: Cadmium has turned up in kids’ jewelry manufactured in China. Cadmium, a metal, can hinder brain development in youngsters. In response, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) has called for a legislative ban on cadmium in kids’ products. ‘It is just despicable that a manufacturer anywhere, in this case in China, would use something that’s known to be poisonous to children and put it in children’s jewelry to save a few bucks,’ he said. I agree.

-- David Lazarus