According to Facebook, the “dislike” button, which has reportedly spread virally through the social network, is a link that has not been officially authorized by the company – it is something of a scam!

Once the Facebook users click on the link to “the official dislike button on Facebook,” they arrive at a fairly official-looking install page, which prompts them to allow the download of an application, which actually hijacks their Facebook status and advertises the fake “dislike” button to all their contacts, thus continuing the cycle.

About the “dislike” button, Mashable’s Stan Schroeder wrote: “Interestingly enough, the app ultimately points you to an existing Firefox add-on called FaceMod, but the add-on doesn’t seem to be connected to the scam. We haven’t verified whether the add-on works as advertised or if it’s dangerous, but one thing is certain: It is not coming from Facebook and it is not an official Facebook dislike button.”

Clearly, the “dislike” button scam is a play on the officially-authorized “like” button on Facebook. The earlier-this-year launched “like” functionality enables users to tag content outside of the Facebook site, even when the users are not logged on to the social network.

As of now, Facebook has neither authorized the “dislike” button nor and does it have any intentions of launching such a functionality in the near future.