Lyndsay Burginger
If you’ve been on the social media website for the last few years, you’ve probably got a friend request from someone who thought you were already friends with. It’s happened to me a couple of times, one of which was someone who I totally forgot I was already friends with. You’ll get a friend request from a duplicate account of your friend and then they’ll try to send you a message with a virus-infected link.
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Other times you can see it happening, like how I saw my mother’s account was duplicated and the cloned account was sending out duplicate friend requests. We watched as messages flooded from her close friends telling her to change her password before all of her personal account data got hacked.
The newest hoax this time floundering on Facebook isn’t harmful but downright annoying and if I get one more of these messages I swear I’m going to throw my laptop out the window. Facebook users are forwarding the message without checking if their profile was duplicated, and people are getting confused about why they are receiving the message.
Here’s the Facebook hoax message that is making the rounds:
“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…I had to do the people individually. Good Luck!”
Burton Kelso, a technology expert who regularly appears on Kanas City news outlets with tech expertise, shares with his Facebook friends and followers a better way to deal with the latest Facebook account hoax.
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Burton shares that the best way to end the chain mail and confusion is to ignore the messages and delete them. The best way to prevent hackers from duplicating your profile is to hide your “Friends List”. You can do this by going to the drop down menu > select Privacy > select Edit under “How People Find and Contact You” > Set to “Only Me”. Mutual friends will be able to see which friends you have in common but only you will be able to have the full view of your friends list.
