Outline:
Widely circulated Facebook post claims that from Saturday morning Facebook will become chargeable. It claims that your Facebook account will stay free if you prove that you are an avid user by sending the same message to at least 10 contacts. Supposedly, after you have shared as instructed, your Facebook logo will turn blue to denote your free account status.
Analysis:
The message is just a silly hoax. Facebook has not announced any plans to start charging users for access. The message is just one more version of a long series of earlier hoaxes that have falsely claimed that Facebook was about to start charging users unless they shared a post.
Pranksters keep reusing this ruse because it is apparently an effective way of tricking people into posting nonsense on their networks. If Facebook did decide to start charging users an access fee, it certainly would not announce the change via a vague and garbled Facebook share. Nor, of course, would it suggest that users could avoid the impending fees by sending on the same message to a specified number of friends.
Any message that makes such claims is sure to be a hoax and should not be shared.
And, keep in mind that Facebook states emphatically on its login page that Facebook is “free and always will be”. Moreover, the Facebook logo is already blue and always has been.
From Saturday morning facebook will become chargeable. If you have at least 10 contacts send them this message. In this way we will see that you are an avid user and your logo will become blue (????) and will remain free. (As discussed in the paper today. Facebook will cost 0.01ps per message. Send this message to 10 people. When you do the light will turn blue
otherwise facebook will activate billing.
Importance Notice
After considerable thought and with an ache in my heart, I have decided that the time has come to close down the Hoax-Slayer website.These days, the site does not generate enough revenue to cover expenses, and I do not have the financial resources to sustain it going forward.
Moreover, I now work long hours in a full-time and physically taxing job, so maintaining and managing the website and publishing new material has become difficult for me.
And finally, after 18 years of writing about scams and hoaxes, I feel that it is time for me to take my fingers off the keyboard and focus on other projects and pastimes.
When I first started Hoax-Slayer, I never dreamed that I would still be working on the project all these years later or that it would become such an important part of my life. It's been a fantastic and engaging experience and one that I will always treasure.
I hope that my work over the years has helped to make the Internet a little safer and thwarted the activities of at least a few scammers and malicious pranksters.
A Big Thank You
I would also like to thank all of those wonderful people who have supported the project by sharing information from the site, contributing examples of scams and hoaxes, offering suggestions, donating funds, or helping behind the scenes.I would especially like to thank David White for his tireless contribution to the Hoax-Slayer Facebook Page over many years. David's support has been invaluable, and I can not thank him enough.
Closing Date
Hoax-Slayer will still be around for a few weeks while I wind things down. The site will go offline on May 31, 2021. While I will not be publishing any new posts, you can still access existing material on the site until the date of closure.Thank you, one and all!
Brett Christensen,
Hoax-Slayer
