The nature of Facebook does not lend itself to a terrible amount of spam for the casual user who has simply connected with a modest number of friends and family for the purpose of keeping in touch. If you find that one of your friends is getting a little too chatty for your taste, you can always choose to hide their updates from your stream.
This is a convenient way of ignoring a friend’s updates without them seeing that you have blocked them or taken them off of your friend list. The majority of the actual spam on Facebook occurs in Facebook groups. Shameless self promoters and unethical users of all sorts have spoiled many groups on Facebook by joining a group and dominating the conversation with useless spam unitl members are forced to quit the group. Other spammers manage to directly message users by finding ways to evade the spam filters used by Facebook.
What to Do About Facebook Spam
The majority of the true spam on Facebook consists of links to phishing sites that are easy to spot with subjects like “check this out” or “hello.” First off, make sure that you do not click on any of the links that appear in these messages. Next, avoid posting responses to your groups to warn or complain of spam and phishing attempts, as these updates only serve to further clog up the messaging service of you group with off-topic information. For the time being, Facebook has yet to find a meaningful way to get rid of spammers from their system. Instead, they recommend some common sense steps to avoid the most common scams that accompany spam. First off, don’t use the same username and password for multiple accounts online. Next, make sure that you keep your password to yourself. Consider simply ignoring or blocking users that are really bombarding your groups. Finally, become a friend of the Facebook Security Information page for timely information and updates on Facebook’s improved solutions to spam as they become available.