VALDOSTA – Facebook and its users are easy prey lately, for hoaxes and breaches. The latest was a security breach which compromised 50 million user accounts, and even more recently a hoax, sending out countless friend requests to your friends, with the instruction to hold your finger down on the message and forward it to everyone possibly effected.
This is a viral hoax spreading across Facebook. Officials are warning users to ignore these fake messages about cloned accounts.
A viral hoax is spreading across Facebook, prompting officials to warn against heeding the fake messages about cloned accounts.
“Hi….I actually got another friend request from you yesterday…which I ignored so you may want to check your account.” It then asks the recipient to forward the message to all their friends, an instruction that causes the hoax to spread even farther, officials said.
While cloned accounts can be an issue — when fraudsters set up fake accounts using a real person’s name — there isn’t a current epidemic, as the hoax message suggests, according to CBS Philly. The hoax sets a tone of trepidation by suggesting an account has been cloned, even when it hasn’t.
“Your account isn’t sending duplicate friend requests. And you didn’t receive a request from the person you’re forwarding it to,” officials in Louisiana warned in a public service message on Facebook. “You’re simply doing it because the message tells you to.”
Facebook, however, isn’t responding directly.
The cloned account hoax comes after Facebook reported a security breach in which 50 million user accounts were accessed by hackers exploiting a bug that affected its popular “View As” feature. Another 40 million user accounts were at risk from the security flaw before Facebook took steps to protect them, the company said last month.
What to do?
Ignore it. Don’t make it worse by forwarding these messages.
SOURCE: TIME http://amp.timeinc.net/time/5418089/facebook-cloning-hoax
