If you’ve been using Facebook Messenger for more than 10 minutes you’ve probably received an instant message that begins with something like:
“Please send this to all your contacts…”
or
“Please tell all the contacts in your Messenger list…”
If your Facebook experience is anything like mine you probably receive these “dire warning” messages on a regular basis.
Well, guess what? Those messages are hoaxes. Every last one of them.
If you pay careful attention you will almost always see something in those messages that is obviously untrue. For example, lets take a look at one such message that I receive several time a month:
“Please tell all the contacts in your messenger list not to accept anything from Fabrizio Brambilla. He has a foto with a dog. He is a hacker and has the system connected to your messanger 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. Hold your finger down on the message. At the bottom in the middle it will say forward. Hit that then click on the names of those in your list and it will send to them.”
One thing that many of these alarming messages have in common is they state that if one of your friends acts upon a request from a certain user, that friend’s account will get hacked – and your account will too!
Of course that last part is an obvious lie.
While it’s certainly true that your friends can click (or tap) on things that can result in something bad happening with their Facebook account (and/or their computer or mobile device), that action cannot, and will not have any effect whatsoever on your account.
Your account will never get hacked simply because the account of one of your friends gets hacked. Facebook just doesn’t work that way.
There are various other dire warnings contained in some of these messages as well, and you can safely ignore each and every one of them.
In fact, the best way to handle any messages that begin with some variation of “Please send this to all your contacts…” is to delete it without even opening it.
Trust me, if you delete these “dire warning” messages without even opening them you won’t miss a thing except for a bit of needless concern and potential damage to your Facebook account and/or computer or mobile device.