Email from Facebook: We care deeply about spam

Fraudsters are waking up to the rich new hunting ground that is social media, we wrote on Friday, as people are vulnerable to fraud on social networks because it’s been safe so far. We mentioned that Facebook is likely pottering away at efforts to combat this problem – well they most certainly are, according to the email from a Facebook spokesperson that shortly after hit our mailbox.

“We agree that education and awareness is the key to combating online security threats and that this issue is something that we need to tackle together as an industry. For our part, we have launched numerous education initiatives and continue to invest heavily in developing complex and innovative systems to protect the people who use Facebook. We encourage people, whether they’re on Facebook or somewhere else on the web, to think twice before clicking on things – do you really think your best friend is going to give you a free iPad for filling out a survey?”

Less than 1% of Facebook’s 500 million users have ever encountered a security issue on the site, the spokesperson continued, adding that the security team is “constantly developing innovative solutions to prevent and crack down on cyber crime”.

So there you go – Facebook takes spam extremely seriously, and that’s straight from the horse’s mouth.