01/17/2024
PSA: we are aware that many business owners are getting a ton of spam messages per day.
Two things:
First: because of
Some access that we have to Meta, we can tell you that they are well aware of the issue, and working hard to reduce the amount of spam messages business pages are receiving. As you can imagine, it's a hard problem, as the spammers have nothing but time and are constantly changing tactics to skirt detection.
Second: While Meta works on this, you can use the automations tool in Meta Business Suite to filter out some of the messages.
I may try and post these instructions to our blog with images soon. Let me know if you would find that helpful.
1. Go to Meta Business Suite on desktop, and then to your inbox.
2. Up the top, you'll see something that looks like an atom symbol - click on that, and that will take you to "automations."
3. Click "create automation" on the top right, and then select "start from scratch."
4. Give it a name, eg “spam filter”
5. Select Messenger as the channel
6. Under "when this happens", select "new message received"
7. Click “add additional conditions” - and then select “keywords” and “any of the following keywords” You will need to add a new condition for each keyword, vs putting them all in one box.
8. Add keywords that make sense for your business. I'm highlighting this because every business will be a bit different.
Example: if your business is running Meta ads for other businesses, filtering out "Facebook" or "Meta" may cause you to miss all or most of your genuine messages from prospective clients.
Or if you're a trademark lawyer, filtering out "copyright" may cause the automation to flag far too many genuine messages.
You will need to think about what is going to filter just spam messages, for YOUR business.
9. Under "take this action" - select mark as, and then select “move to spam."
10. Hit "save changes."
From there, you'll want to do three things:
1. Check your spam folder periodically, in case some messages have been accidentally filtered (if this is happening a lot, you may need to change your keywords).
2. Hackers will constantly change their wording to get around our systems - so you may need to update your keywords if you notice more of them getting through.
3. Make sure to keep educating the people in your network about spam, so they don't fall for it (and there is less motivation for spammers to send these).
Hope this helps!
Marcus Neto
[email protected]
P.S. feel free to share this. And if you need help increasing awareness for your business, drop me a line. Websites, Social Media management, social media ad campaigns, search engine optimization and more!
