Tech Tip: Facebook Chain Mail Scams

Chances are, you’ve received a message on Facebook Messenger from some distant family member that reads something like: 

Please tell all the contacts in your messenger list not to accept Jayden K. Smith friendship request. He is a hacker and has the system connected to your Facebook account. If one of your contacts accepts it, you will also be hacked, so make sure that all your friends know it. Thanks.  

While forwarding this message may not actually harm anyone, it won’t help either. It’s not possible to hack into a Facebook account by becoming friends with someone that you know. In addition to this, whatever the “system connected to your Facebook account” is, it cannot be accessed by a friend request.  

Again, this is not necessarily a harmful scam. However, “Jayden K. Smith” cannot do any of the things that this message says that he can, so there’s no point in passing the message along. 

Adapted from http://www.ricksdailytips.com/please-tell-all-contacts-facebook-hoax/