Facebook revealed on Friday that it has obtained nearly $2 billion in legal judgments against spammers, and talked extensively about how it won’t put up with fake likes and other spam on its network.

The company says it’s honoring Cyber Security Awareness Month by discussing how it is fighting spam, and giving tips to users for “authentic interactions”.

Facebook’s Matt Jones writes in a blog post, “Most people rarely come into contact with spam or other low quality content on Facebook, but we’re constantly working to make our service even better. It’s important to remember that fraudulent activity is bad for everyone — including Page owners, advertisers, Facebook and people on our platform. We adapt our defenses constantly to stay ahead of spammers’ techniques, and one area we’ve focused on for several years is fake likes. We have a strong incentive to aggressively go after the bad actors behind fake likes because businesses and people who use our platform want real connections and results, not fakes. Businesses won’t achieve results and could end up doing less business on Facebook if the people they’re connected to aren’t real. It’s in our best interest to make sure that interactions are authentic.”

“The spammers behind fake likes have one goal — to make money off of Page owners without delivering any value in return. They make their profit by promising and generating likes to Facebook Page administrators who typically don’t understand that fake likes won’t help them achieve their business goals,” Jones says. “Fake like peddlers tempt Page admins with offers to ‘buy 10,000 likes!’ or other similar schemes. To deliver those likes, the scammers often try to create fake accounts, or in some cases, even hack into real accounts in order to use them for sending spam and acquiring more likes. Since these fraudulent operations are financially motivated businesses, we focus our energy on making this abuse less profitable for the spammers.”

Tips for authentic interactions Facebook gives include not buying fraudulent likes, focusing on key business objectives, and being cautious to avoid infecting your computer with malware. Each of these, as well as Facebook’s general approach to “site integrity,” is discussed further in the post if you want to dive in.

Image via Facebook