Column: No you haven’t been hacked on Facebook

There is a new chain letter making the rounds on Facebook causing people some concern. We’ve received it several times by messenger.

It reads as follows:

“Hi….I actually got another friend request from you yesterday…which I ignored so you may want to check your account. Hold your finger on the message until the forward button appears…then hit forward and all the people you want to forward too [sic]….I had to do the people individually. Good Luck! PLEASE DO NOT ACCEPT A NEW ONE FROM ME AT THIS TIME.”

This is nothing more than a social media chain letter.

Accounts get cloned all the time. Your profile photo is public by default, so scammers will copy your profile image or images, and create a new account with that image and your name.

They will then start sending friend requests to your friends, many of whom will accept them.

The hope is to be able to scam your friends into sending money or to give spammers a new audience to send links to stuff they hope they’ll buy.

The best thing you can do is search your name every so often.

If there are two accounts, report the bogus account.

Here are the directions from Facebook:

To report a profile:

“Go to the profile you want to report

“In the bottom right of the cover photo, click and select Give feedback or report this profile

“Follow the on-screen instructions”

Facebook will take care of the rest.

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4 Comments

  1. That’s why I read this rag! I always leave the page smarter then when I got here!

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