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19th Oct 2016

People are STILL falling for that old Facebook privacy hoax rumour

This hoax is now SEVEN years old.

Conor Heneghan

You’ve probably seen it before and as you’ve probably already guessed, it’s a hoax.

If you’re one of the millions of people around the world who browse Facebook on a daily basis, you may well have come across a post in recent days about privacy updates on the social networking site.

A few variations of the message have been doing the rounds online, but they pretty much follow the same format, issuing a warning about all Facebook posts becoming public – including posts, messages and photos that have been deleted – with language that suggests the world is coming to an end.

fbhoax

Pic via 10tv.com

As a lot of people who can tell the instant they see it and as has been reported by snopes.com, such posts are entirely without foundation, but you’re still likely to see some people either sharing it, or copying and pasting the text into a post on their own Facebook page.

Facebook themselves addressed the issue when similar posts did the rounds in the past.

“This is false. Anyone who uses Facebook owns and controls the content and information they post, as stated in our terms,” Facebook said.

“They control how that content and information is shared. That is our policy, and it always has been.”

Besides, their privacy policy is pretty clear and straightforward and can be viewed in more detail here.

So, it’s pretty much a case of nothing to see here but let this serve as a prior warning for those of you who might be caught off guard.

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