Opinions on whether this is Legit - Facebook!!?

[Robert B]

m is correct -- the URL you've given ought to be legit.

This is because big organizations like Facebook typically have control over the entire web site of a given domain name. In this case, the domain name in the URL you've given is the same as the domain name used in Facebook's normal URL (a URL is basically a web address).

How do you determine what the "domain name" is? It's the last two "words" in between the slashes, where a "word" is separated by either a slash or a period.

So in "http://www.beta.facebook.com/", the "words" are www, beta, facebook, com -- the last two words are, "facebook" and "com", so the domain name is facebook.com.

Facebook's normal URL is "http://www.facebook.com", so the words are www, facebook, com. Again, the last two words are "facebook" and "com" so the domain name is facebook.com.

If the web site were http://www.facebookbeta.com, the domain name would be facebookbeta.com, which is different from the site's known domain name -- it might not be legit. Likewise, "www.facebook.beta.com/facebook.com" could not be trusted on the basis on domain name, because the domain name in this URL is beta.com.

Sometimes smaller companies or organizations, or people with personal web pages will "sublease" a domain name. You might trust one web site under that domain, but not all of them, in which case you can't go by domain name to judge legitimacy. But for companies like Facebook, going by domain name is safe.

A couple more caveats:

Sometimes a domain name might closely resemble a legit site, but be different. For example, a URL with the domain name faceb0ok.com would not be legit, because one of the letters is a zero rather than an o.

Also, sometimes the contents of an email, or a malicious web site will produce a pop-up window that very closely resembles a normal browser window, but is in fact a fake. None of the contents of such a fake window can be trusted. Identifying such a window can be difficult, especially if you use a popular browser in a default configuration, but you may tell if something is off if the browser looks different from normal (different colors or themes, arrangements of buttons, strange window sizing, lack of or addition of a toolbar, etc.) The best way to avoid this is to avoid visiting shady web sites and to run anti-virus software.