Emailed about a Facebook "Legal Notice"? It's Legit!

If you are a regular Facebook user, there's a good chance that a message was sent out by legalnotice@facebookmail.com to the e-mail address you used to sign up on Facebook. At first glance, it just seems like cheap spam, getting past the filter, but doing a little research yields some interesting results.

What next? I really am the heir to a Nigerian fortune?

More than 99.99% percent of the time, you should not open an e-mail titled, "Re: LEGAL NOTICE OF SETTLEMENT OF CLASS ACTION." that you do not recognize -- but many news sources on the web (spanning all the way up from dozens of rink-a-dink little blogs like mine to The Telegraph) are actually saying that you may want to take a look.

If you want, you could claim your stake of anywhere from pennies to $10 (the amount is still to be determined), but chances are so many people will try to take a slice of the $20 million pie that it gets divvied up between a few privacy organizations as per the section on the notice that ruled, "If the number of claims made renders it economically infeasible to pay money to persons who make a timely and valid claim, payment will be made to the not-for-profit organizations identified on the Settlement website at www.fraleyfacebooksettlement.com"

Why, though, are we all being compensated by Facebook?