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There were rumors circulating online that Facebook was going to make its users pay $5.99 to keep their status updates private. People began to worry that their posts can become public. Actually, this hoax has been circulating out there for the last 6 years in various forms, but became extremely popular just recently. Fortunately, this time round, it doesn’t lead users to a link that attempts to install malware on their machine.
Facebook can officially confirm that its privacy settings remain unaltered, and all posts and accounts can be kept private if you use the drop-down menu while publishing them. The privacy settings can also be changed in the general-settings menu.
Of course, Facebook remains a target for hoaxes of this kind, and since they offer users to copy and paste these “news” to avoid paying for keeping their posts private, they remain capable of spreading rapidly all over the web. The social network takes actions to fight this. In the beginning of this year, Facebook announced that it was altering its news-feed algorithm in order to be able to crack down on false and misleading news and stories.
Back in January, Facebook’s software engineer Erich Owens and research scientist Udi Weinsberg announced that the latest update to News Feed reduced the distribution of stories that other users have reported as hoaxes. The new algorithm also added an annotation to posts that have received many of these types of reports in order to warn other users. However, this particular $5.99 privacy hoax is being copied and pasted rather than spreading using the “share” button, and this may help it bypass those measures.
Facebook can officially confirm that its privacy settings remain unaltered, and all posts and accounts can be kept private if you use the drop-down menu while publishing them. The privacy settings can also be changed in the general-settings menu.
Of course, Facebook remains a target for hoaxes of this kind, and since they offer users to copy and paste these “news” to avoid paying for keeping their posts private, they remain capable of spreading rapidly all over the web. The social network takes actions to fight this. In the beginning of this year, Facebook announced that it was altering its news-feed algorithm in order to be able to crack down on false and misleading news and stories.
Back in January, Facebook’s software engineer Erich Owens and research scientist Udi Weinsberg announced that the latest update to News Feed reduced the distribution of stories that other users have reported as hoaxes. The new algorithm also added an annotation to posts that have received many of these types of reports in order to warn other users. However, this particular $5.99 privacy hoax is being copied and pasted rather than spreading using the “share” button, and this may help it bypass those measures.
