I just got an odd email from facebook. It is surprisingly brief providing no explanation of any kind, which makes it appear remarkably like a run of the mill SPAM email IMHO…

Unfortunately, the settings that control which email notifications get sent to you were lost. We’re sorry for the inconvenience.

To reset your email notification settings, go to:

http://www.facebook.com/editaccount.php?notifications

Thanks,
The Facebook Team

Now I get the usual stack of spam every day and I would normally just hit the report spam button gmail kindly supplies, but this message appears to be genuine (unlike this facebook spam). What I’m wondering is if this applies to my personal account only, or has there been a stuff up affecting other users too. If you have a facebook account I’d be very interested to know if you received this also.

If you look at the email header you will find that the email comes directly from facebook.com as Facebook Insider explains, so it is genuine. On the surface the fact that it’s genuine would seem to be a good thing, and it is, but the fact that people are confusing it with spam isn’t good. Over the years I must have received thousands of very genuine looking emails from scammers and I’ve come close to being fooled myself but now Facebook is sending genuine emails that appear to be spam!

Update: Alex reports that he received the same email in the comments below but I have spoken to others who still have not received the message.  This just makes it more suspicious for the casual observer, and it seems I’m not the only one that thinks so.

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