Well, an old familiar Facebook hoax is making the rounds again.
This time around it’s being spread primarily via chat and instant messages, and unfortunately it seems to be spreading like wildfire.
As usual, there are several variations of this scam, and you will probably end up receiving several of them before this round of the scam runs its course.
But the above being said, the text typically reads something like this:
“Please tell all the contacts in your messenger list not to accept Jayden K. Smith friendship request. He is a hacker and has the system connected to your Facebook account. If one of your contacts accepts it, you will also be hacked, so make sure that all your friends know it. Thanks. Forwarded as received.”
There are a couple of dead-giveaways that this is a hoax:
1 – Even if “Jayden K. Smith” was a real hacker, he wouldn’t be able to “connect the system to your Facebook account”. That would require you taking some specific action (i.e. clicking a bad link, enabling a malicious app, etc.) besides simply accepting his friend request.
2 – As with number 1 above, a Facebook account cannot be hacked simply by having “one of your contacts” accept another user’s friend request. If that was possible every account on Facebook would end up getting hacked within an hour or two.
While there’s no real danger associated with complying with the request stated in the hoax messages, receiving the forwarded message will likely annoy your friends that know it to be a hoax and unnecessarily alarm the friends that don’t.
Bottom line: If you receive one of these hoax messages, simply ignore it and reply back to the sender and let them know this is hoax so they can stop forwarding the message to additional friends and stop worrying about “Jayden K. Smith”.
And always remember this: Any message that tells you forward it to everyone on your Contacts list is a hoax or scam. No exceptions.
Bonus tip: Click here to learn about several other scams and hoaxes that are making the rounds as we speak.