5 effortless steps to block Facebook spam from reaching your news feed

We recently posted an article about Facebook ‘Like’ scams and the truth behind them. This post talked about how some parties created fake pages to invoke sympathy and got hundreds of thousands of likes and comments as a result. This in turn enhanced the Edge Rank of a page and spread as spam to even more Facebook users. This post now explains steps on how to prevent such messages from appearing in your news feed.

These steps will be useful, if you often find your news feed overflowing with such posts, or posts that claim your friends have recommended something by liking it. You can resolve this in different ways. But in most cases, these friends are not even aware that their actions are causing spam or recommendations to reach your news feed. If you find that a lot of spam has reached you through a specific individual, you should probably inform him/her about this.

STEP 1: Click on the tiny scroll-down arrow that appears in the top-right corner of a news feed item to see a list of actions. If you click on ‘Report Story or Spam‘ the post will be dealt with by Facebook.

Hide post

STEP 2: If you click on ‘Hide…‘ you will see the following message. This implies that the item has disappeared from your news feed and you can choose to ‘Unhide‘ it as well.

Hidden post

STEP 3: If you hover your mouse over ‘Change what updates you get‘, you can select the kind of news feed updates you will receive from this person. You can select ‘only important’ updates, any combination of various updates or unsubscribe from the news feed completely.

Change settings

STEP 4: However, if you click on ‘Organize who you see in news feed‘, you will see the various lists that have been created. This can also be viewed via the left-side column of your news feed page.

Friend lists

STEP 5: You can now add and remove friends from these lists and also decide what kind of updates will be received from them. Additionally, other lists based on any parameter can be created as well.

Manage lists

These simple instructions on how to deal with such spam messages and avoid Facebook ‘Like’ scams can be implemented by anyone. Anti-spam software is unable to deal with such threats so it is crucial to be aware of these risks and how they can be avoided. In a worst case scenario, you can simply unsubscribe completely from a friend’s activity or block/unfriend them on Facebook for good.

Rahul Thadani

Rahul Thadani


35 Comments

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  1. Avatar DEBASHIS PANDANovember 9, 2012 at 8:40 PM

    Can somebody hack or trouble my system just from facebook or by using facebook chat. If ‘Yes’, then how to get rid of those things!

    Reply
  2. Avatar Ansumay DattaNovember 9, 2012 at 8:46 PM

    Informative.

    Reply
  3. Avatar MVN Vijaya KumarNovember 9, 2012 at 9:09 PM

    Beautiful information indeed

    Reply
  4. Avatar Lionel PereiraNovember 9, 2012 at 9:25 PM

    Thanks QH….very informative & useful info.

    Reply
  5. This is helpful to know how to escape from unwanted news and scamenews.

    Reply
  6. Avatar SAMIRAN BHOWALNovember 10, 2012 at 9:09 AM

    Thanx for da information.Hope we shall get more and more such news in future.

    Reply
  7. good post sir. thank for information

    Reply
  8. Avatar Dhirajkumar DarawadeNovember 10, 2012 at 10:36 AM

    Really nice information Rahul Thadani,if any other information like this please share with all.

    Reply
  9. Thanks for giving such useful information.

    Reply
  10. Avatar Ashutosh Kumar BhardwajNovember 10, 2012 at 12:17 PM

    Nice and Informative!
    I just knew how to organize type of news or what we just only wanted to know from a friend or page (photos or daily life, status etc.) But The step 5 ifs somethinf worth knowing!
    Thank You ЁЯША

    Reply
  11. Avatar ashish thummarNovember 11, 2012 at 6:27 PM

    thanks for important advice…………..
    ЁЯША

    Reply
  12. Avatar Jagdish TamyaNovember 11, 2012 at 7:36 PM

    рд╢реНрд░реА рдорд╛рди,Rahul Thadani рдЬреА рд╕рдордп рд╕рдордп рдкрд░ рдЙрдкрдпреЛрдЧреА рдЬрд╛рдирдХрд╛рд░реА рджреЗрдиреЗ рдХреЗ рд▓рд┐рдП рдмрд╣реБрдд рдмрд╣реБрдд рдЖрднрд╛рд░ рдЖрдкрдХрд╛…..

    Reply
  13. thnx buddy

    Reply
  14. Avatar Pankaj MakkarNovember 13, 2012 at 12:43 AM

    really nice information…!

    Reply
  15. Avatar santanu duttNovember 13, 2012 at 7:22 PM

    thank you quicheal for that hints.

    Reply
  16. Avatar santanu duttNovember 13, 2012 at 7:24 PM

    this is a nice hints to me. i shall follow it.

    Reply
  17. Avatar .K N BADARINATHNovember 15, 2012 at 12:54 PM

    Sir,

    A Wondefull Idea, it will be implemented

    K N Badarinath

    Reply
  18. i want to remove some friend from my friend list but i cannot do that how i can do that?

    Reply
  19. how i can remove a bunch of friends from my facebook friends list.

    Reply
    • Rahul Thadani Rahul ThadaniNovember 16, 2012 at 10:57 AM

      Hi Prabhat,
      Visit the profile page for the friend you wish to remove. In the top right there is a box that says ‘Message’. Click the drop-down arrow next to that and then select ‘Unfriend’.
      Regards.

      Reply
  20. Avatar Garuda Dictionary SoftwareNovember 15, 2012 at 4:50 PM

    Chatting in any environment be it any mail server or social network is not safe always. Spammer & Hacker always wait for these opportunities. You must have installed paid anti virus with fire wall facility to deal hard with hacker.

    Wishing you Safe browsing…
    Feelmaax Team
    India

    Reply
  21. nice step-QH

    Reply
  22. it’s really very helpful information for facebook users as well as the business man like me. my large format printer is getting trouble when using facebook for timepass while printing, and I could not solve this problem yet. thanks for the information. I will spread this news through facebook itself. thanks once again

    Reply
  23. Avatar birendra kushwahaNovember 17, 2012 at 6:11 AM

    thank you.

    Reply
  24. Avatar birendra kushwahaNovember 17, 2012 at 6:13 AM

    ok.

    Reply
  25. Thanks rahul for one more like scam of FB post.

    Reply
  26. Thanks for important advice….It’s realy very helpful…

    Reply
  27. really nic and useful info………………..thnx for this gr8 info

    Reply
  28. Really helpful information, thank you so much sir and this process i perform on my FB account and its really work.

    Reply
  29. I hope that your information will be very helpful for the new FB users.

    Reply
  30. Hi.. i would like to ask u one thng.. What should i do if i want dat no one else thn my facebook frnds get notification of my activities. For ex: if a frnd of mine liked or commented on my photo..thn his frnds cn see dat activity in their news feed. bt what should i do so that thy cannot even look at my photos as thy r nt in my frnd list..evn if in my privacy settngs i hv enabled visibility only to my frnds.

    Reply
    • Rahul Thadani Rahul ThadaniNovember 27, 2012 at 10:20 AM

      Hi Shreya,
      If you have enabled visibility of your photos only to your friends, then only they will be able to see it. However, if a friend of yours tags you in his photos then he controls who sees those pictures. His friends will be able to view his photos. If you are tagged in them and wish to not be seen, you must ask him to untag you or to remove the photos altogether.
      Regards.

      Reply
  31. Avatar Indravadan PatelMarch 17, 2013 at 11:33 AM

    Good Information for everybody.
    Tx to QH.

    Reply