EXCITING NEWS: TNG WhatsApp Channel is LIVE…
Subscribe for FREE to get LIVE NEWS UPDATE. Click here to subscribe!
I did as did some millions of Facebook users who received the warning message about a friend request from some Jayden K. Smith.
Globally, Facebook and Twitter users have been sent into a frenzy being warned not to accept an unsolicited friend request from one mysterious Jayden K. Smith, who is not Will Smith’s son because that would be Jaden Smith.
“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. 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,” was the version of the message I received from more than 15 contacts I know on my friends’list.
This drove my curiosity to want to find out what this is all about and it took me to myth-busting website, Snopes that this has been a “long running hoax”.
“Accepting a Facebook friend request from a stranger will not provide hackers with access to your computer and online accounts.
“Variants of these messages are circulated endlessly, with different names swapped in and out.
“The most common variant of this hoax is one that warns the reader not to accept Facebook friend requests from ‘hackers’ purportedly named ‘Christopher Davies’ and ‘Jessica Davies,’ otherwise one of the two will wreak some unspecified havoc,” Snopes said in a post busting the Jayden K. Smith myth.
As to whether it’s dangerous, it’s generally thought not. Simply accepting a friend request is a relatively inefficient way of delivering a virus or other IT nasty. Fooling people into opening a rogue email attachment works far better.
But there’s no guarantees, states Snopes.
“It’s not outside the realm of possibility that an e-mail message or a link posted on Facebook might carry a virus payload which could infect your computer and allow it be controlled by a botnet, but virus warnings that correspond to the patterns detailed above can be safely dismissed as japes,” Snopes further stated.