Sometimes you can become too suspicious when you receive an email about a security breach in one of your many online or social media accounts. I thought that two emails I received from Facebook were phishing attempts. Turns out they were genuine. This is how you can check whether an email from Facebook is genuine or not!
Tonight I received two emails from Facebook telling me that there had been unsuccessful login attempts to my Facebook account. Facebook asked me whether these logins were done by me. Since I have two factor authorisation turned on, the attempts would be futile, but I became curious after reading the emails.
You can see the full message I received in the photo above. As you can see, there is a button in in the middle of the message telling me I can just click on it to log on to Facebook. This, combined with the fact that the email was sent from the domain name facebookmail.com aroused my suspicions further. I was sure this was an attempt to get me to click and be taken to a site filled with malware.
I googled the message text and found that many people have received such emails from Facebook in the past few years, and all these articles said that the emails were in fact genuinely sent from Facebook. However, I still wasn’t convinced. But then I suddenly remembered: Facebook keeps a list of every email they have sent you! It would therefore be easy for me to check whether these emails had in fact been sent by Facebook or not.
Here’s how you can check this:
- Click on the pull down arrow to the right of the question mark in the upper right corner of Facebook. Then choose Settings:
. - Choose Security and login in the left side menu:
. - You will now se a whole bunch of security settings in the field to the right of the menu. Scroll down to the bottom of this list until you find See recent emails from Facebook:
. - Click on the View button. You will now see a list of all security emails you’ve received from Facebook:
. - I now saw that this list showed that Facebook had indeed sent me two emails warning me about someone trying to log on to my account. Yikes!
You can also see other emails that Facebook has sent you by clicking on OTHER EMAILS.
Hi,
I joined Facebook last night at 1:18am. Got a couple of emails re joining, with their old logo (didn’t know at the time, because the last time I had an account was 5 years ago). I went onto the site to look up my best mate who has a very common name, saw there were a few of them in Adelaide, and due to the fact it was late in the morning, I wasn’t going to contact him but still wanted to add him. I saw one of his sons accounts, so thought I’d look in his friends to see if Peter was there. I got about a few scrolls in and the page went to another page saying my account had been disabled due to community violations. I had no idea what they were talking about. I went to get it reviewed after trying to figure out what to do and how to do it. It asked for my email, phone number and I’d. I uploaded a picture of me originally that didn’t seem to do anything, then I uploaded my birth certificate with everything blurred out except my name and date of birth (which is what I’d given them originally). I went and checked my emails and saw that I’d missed an email that had the new logo saying someone had logged in at 15:38 on 24/05/2021, which is impossible since I hadn’t created the account till 1:18 on 25/05/2021. So I thought maybe they’d made a mistake with the time difference and this was an email from America without the adjustment. Yet, when I checked the time in Menlo Park, California – it’s 17 hours! I then received another email saying I’d been disabled – with the old logo again – at the correct time and with my IP address showing and ‘UTC +10’. I freaked. I also had Snovio activated on this email account. Luckily, it’s a new account that’s only been used for this (I set it up with Snovio to track emails to my landlord). I went back to Facebook which then let me try and recover my account, but it wouldn’t give me the email with code. I tried 5 times, then figured I’d deactivate Snovio. It gave me the code almost instantly. I went back, went through the prompts, but it still told me it was disabled. I looked at the community rules and the only thing that made sense – but not really – is my mate’s son is 18, and the guidelines say something about protecting the rights of 13 to 18 year olds. Which doesn’t make sense if he’s legally an adult at 18. But, Facebook doesn’t give you any option to put any of this forward in any capacity. No email, no phone number, no helpline – unless you’re actually in your account! So, I tried to open another account with my shortened name, same date of birth, and another one of my email addresses with my real name (like the other one, just a different configuration), and it wouldn’t even let me confirm. I have wait until they deem me a good citizen. I don’t even think my mate would be able to help.
What gets me, is I can’t even alert Facebook or find out if someone’s using them to scam. I downloaded their app onto my laptop. The one with the new logo, but when you go through Chrome you get the old page and logo, but the same result. I can’t even find out if they’re using two logos. I changed all the security settings on all my email accounts: passwords, phone numbers, and recovery addresses. I can’t even cancel my Facebook account for extra security. Which is ludicrous. I was at this for 6 hours.
I hope I’ve given you enough info to help me figure it out, or to alert others, or Facebook.
I haven’t been able to get to sleep.
Thanks.
Kind regards, Jeremy.
P.S.
I forgot to mention re the Facebook post I just made, that I live in Australia and the first time difference I mentioned between 15:18 (this was the actual time, I made an error by saying 15:38 in the original comment) on the 24/05/2021that my account was supposedly compromised, and the time I opened the account at 01:18 is 10 hours. Nowhere close to the time difference between here and Facebook’s headquarters. I don’t believe I did anything wrong, but I would love to know what’s going on. I hadn’t even set up my profile. I think I was on there for a total of twenty minutes. I was looking forward to connecting with my friends interstate. I also need it for work.
Besides the dodgy Facebook, I also suspect Snovio. As a email tracker, they have access to some pretty sensitive info. That’s why I only used them for a brand new account, and not my other ones.
Again, thanks.
Kind regards,
Jeremy.
Hi Jeremy,
My name is Tania, I am the head of the customer care team at Snovio. Sorry to know about the situation that happened to you, I hope that Facebook helps to resolve the issue with the account. As for the issue itself and Email Tracker extension, the extension does not have any access to sensitive information in your emails, does not view/save/store content of emails, does not transfer any data elsewhere, and cannot be the reason for the security issue that occurred with your Facebook account.
The only information we store is the email address of the Gmail account you have connected to our service, the access token, and identifiers for drafts and messages sent with the extension enabled (I would like to highlight that there is no access to the content of emails).
We can add a tracking pixel to the body of emails sent through our service to track email opens and edit links in your emails to track link clicks. We use data acquired through these tracking methods for statistics and reports.
Our service uses this information only to provide you with the following services:
– Tracking of opens and clicks on the links;
– Remind Me feature of Snovio Email Tracker for Gmail;
– Send Later feature of Snovio Email Tracker for Gmail.
We do not share or pass data to any third parties under any circumstances.
Important to mention that our service successfully passes the annual Google Security Check.
Please find more information in our Privacy Policy regarding the type of personal data and its purposes of collection/processing: https://snov.io/privacy-policy.
If you have any questions or concerns regarding the Email Tracker extension usage, please email us at help@snov.io. Our team is always happy to assist.
Hope you are having a good day!
Regards,
Tania