Spammers are sending out fake Facebook notification e-mails with links that go to online advertisements instead of to Facebook.com. This practice is called Spamvertising. Spamvertising is the words "Spam" and "advertising" put together without the letters "ad".
This is how one of the fake Facebook spam e-mail messages looks:
From: Facebook IT Department (billyhsu@ms34.hinet.net)
Sent: Wed 4/10/13 5:09 AM
You have a new message from Facebook IT Department.
Your profile has been successfully updated.
View Notifications Go to Facebook
The spammers may change the above email message subject, “from address” and other information.
Most persons will not hesitate to click on the links or buttons in this e-mail message, because they will be curious to know what the message is about, especially if the message appears as if it came from Facebook IT department.
Spammers are sending out these spam email messages in order to:
· help drive internet traffic to a website, thereby, help make that website popular
· receive revenue from advertisers by help driving people to the advertisers' product websites
If you are sent any e-mail notifications, you can hover over the link in it, and your browser will display the address where the link will take you, if you should click on it. Your browser will display the link address in the Status bar.
Also, avoid clicking on any links in an e-mail notification. Always go directly to the website that sent the notification and view it from there.
For example:
If you are sent a Facebook notification via email, instead of clicking on the links in it, go to facebook.com and view the notification from there.