Another Facebook Horror Story? Are You Sure?

This is the latest one doing the rounds:

With the new 'FB timeline' on its way over the next week for EVERYONE...please do both of us a favour: Hover over my name above. In a few seconds you'll see a box that says "Subscribed." Hover over that, then go to "Comments and Likes" and unclick it. That will stop my posts and yours to me from showing up on the side bar for everyone to see, but MOST IMPORTANTLY it LIMITS HACKERS from invading our profiles. If you re-post this I will do the same for you. You'll know I've acknowledged you because if you tell me that you've done it I'll 'like' it. Thanks

Really? REALLY? HOW? Well, the answer is: No, of course not. As usual with this kind of alarmist stuff, it's complete and utter pap. For a proper explanation, please see snopes.com here.

But that's what gets me: every week or so, there is a new "caution" "beware" "hack, phish, virus" alert on any form of social network, not to mention the e-mails warning about strangers asking you to sniff something in car parks (yeah, because you need someone to warn you about that, right?), about a friend request that will wipe your hard drive, steal your cat and run off with your favourite mug if you even glance at it.

Come ON. I could understand when the Internet and PCs were shiny new toys and scary technology. I get that for most people (including myself!), it STILL is a mystery in many aspects. But look here, YOU don't have to know the technology, YOU don't have to understand anything about malicious scripts or .exe files and what not.

All you need to do is stop your frantic fingers hitting the forward button for 5 mns. Open a new browser window, and go to Snopes, or Hoaxbusters, or That's nonsense. Too complicated? Copy and paste a small portion of the suspect message into Google (or any other search engine of your choice) and see what comes up. Hint: It will be Snopes, of Hoaxbusters, etc...

Then READ what it says. Oh look at that, it's another rumour! Another chain letter, nonsense, hoax, call it what you will. Then DON'T send it on, or copy and paste on your status. Instead, copy and paste the link to Snopes, Hoaxbusters etc... and send that to the friend who passed on the fake info in the 1st place, and ask them to pass it on backwards.

I admit, the ones that get me the most are those who then reply: "Well, I did it just in case. Because you never know". Listen: there are more than enough real things to worry about in this world, do you really think you're doing anyone a favour by adding fake scares to it? If you have a technophobe pal who's just finding their way round the Internet, are you really helping them by scaring the crap out of them every time they log on? No, I didn't think so.

Hoaxers thrive by playing on your fears, your gullibility and your willingness to suspend disbelief when you read their messages of doom.

So, to plagiarise the Green Code: Read. Stop. Think. Check. Delete. Don't worry, if one of them were to be true, it would be all over the news, not just on e-mail and social networks.

Useful Links:
http://www.snopes.com/
http://www.hoaxbusters.org/
http://www.hoax-slayer.com/
http://www.thatsnonsense.com/