PC Doctor March 29, 2013

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Dear PC Doctor,

I was recently going through the spam folder in my email inbox because sometimes-legitimate emails end up in there.  I came across an email that had a subject line saying that I had a message for me on Facebook.  It looked official; it had the Facebook logo and everything.  But when I clicked on the link in the email, I ended up at a website selling drugs from Canada!  What happened?  Is it possible that my Facebook was hacked?

             Lee

Dear Lee,

Any email that says it is from Facebook yet ends up in your spam folder is a good indicator that it did not actually come from Facebook.  There are some clever emails that look very official even if they did not come from Facebook.  Next time before clicking any links in fishy emails, check the sender's address.  A legitimate email from Facebook will always be from an address with @facebookmail.com at the end.

If you are ever unsure of whether an email is real or not and you are hesitant to click the link because it looks odd, a good idea would be to just go to Facebook.com and log in to see if the notification is legitimate.  If the email was real, you would be sure to see the notification on Facebook to match the one in the email.  If not, disregard the spammy email.

Your Facebook account is probably safe.  The email and website you described seemed to just be simple advertisement spam.  If you didn't share your Facebook credentials with the site, you should be safe.  However, in any similar future circumstances there is no harm in changing your password after something suspicious happens just to be extra safe.

Good luck!
                    PC Doctor

Until next time… happy computing!