How do I remove a Facebook spam status update?

You've been suckered into one of the many Facebook viruses that seem to spread through the social network like wildfire, and be assured you're not alone. What happens is that somehow the entire spam link, whatever you click on, acts as a "like" button, so if you simply click through to see what's going on, boom, you "Liked" it and now your friends are going to see in their news feed stream that you liked the spammy Facebook posting. If they are then curious and they click, well, round and round it goes, causing quite a bit of trouble.

What's confusing is that sometimes you don't hear about your spam status update until after it's pushed down on your Facebook home page and you - possibly - can't find it.

So what do you do?

The answer is follow the steps I outline below.

I will note that so I could capture these steps I did click on one of these spammy Facebook updates. If you ended up clicking on it too, well, um, oops. Sorry. :-)

First off, after I clicked on a curious Facebook status update from someone else, I noticed that it showed up as an update from me too:

Now if it's visible here on your News Feed, it's easy: Just move your cursor to the top right corner of the update box and an "X" will show up:

But what if it's not visible because it's been an hour or even longer since you clicked and helped spread this $#@$#@$ spam video virus? Then you need to go back to your own Facebook status updates, which is most easily done by clicking on your own name on the top left corner of the screen:

Now you should see the update, just as it showed up for everyone else who is connected to you here on Facebook:

Let's zoom in a bit, so you can see that it too has that "X" icon that pops up if you move the cursor to the correct spot:

Click on the "X" button and you'll see a number of choices are presented to you:

This is spam, so let's mark it as such by selecting "Mark as Spam..."

That's our goal. Click on "Confirm" and the post will vanish for you and everyone who has you showing up in their news stream too. Easily done. Now, about that initial click... :-)

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