Last Thursday, Jan. 16, 2025, I learned how to post a Facebook ad. Yes, I know I do technology for a living, and I’m sure I could have figured out what buttons to click on my own to set up an ad, but marketing is still foreign to me and I have no idea what makes an effective ad. So before clicking a bunch of buttons, I listened to helpful instruction from author Alana Terry at Thomas Umstattd’s Author Media 2025 Novel Marketing Conference and then took the plunge.
I posted the Facebook ad Thursday night. This phishing email came in early Monday morning. I’ll give it a B- because it enticed me to open it and that deserves some credit. But you would think that somebody who goes to the trouble to troll new Facebook ads to drive potential victims to an elaborate fake website would at least show a more credible fake return email address.
For more phishing samples, see my phish collection. Don’t phall for phishing.
But don’t go away, there’s more after the email screen shot below.

Against my own advice, I clicked the “submit a complaint” link. Do not try this at home. We are professionals. The website opens with a cute Meta animation–a nice touch–and then goes for the kill. Somebody went to a bunch of trouble to set this up. They even built official-looking appeal forms. But note the URL. Nothing good will come from interacting with this website. This is not Facebook’s parent company, Meta. This is somebody impersonating Meta.

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