My wife recently fell victim to a Facebook spam. She’s in good company. While many Facebook spam notes are as easy to spot as their e-mail counterparts—Click here to get CHEAP VIAGARA!!!—others are much more subtle. Recently, for example, one “offer” appeared to be a discount from a major airline. The one that caught her promised a sensational story about a local suicide.
So what can you do? Well, for starters, be as paranoid about unexpected messages from friends and colleagues as you would be when checking your e-mail. Would my friend Esther really send me a note with a link about Pittsburgh Steelers season tickets? I doubt it. Baseball maybe; football never! [Go DBacks! —Ed.]
Be especially wary of short messages that promises insight into some kind of dramatic news. Let’s say you click on one anyway; suddenly your Facebook wall has junk all over it and your account is sending messages to all and sundry. What do you do now?