In the past week, you've undoubtedly received a myriad of messages (specifically through Messenger) from a friend or family member stating they had received "another friend request" and asking you to forward the message on.

The complete message reads:

Hi … I actually got another friend request from you yesterday … which I ignored so you may want to check your account. Hold your finger on the message until the forward button appears … then hit forward and all the people you want to forward too … I had to do the people individually. Good Luck!

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DJ Nyke, Townsquare Media
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According to Snopes, the warning suggests the recipient’s Facebook account have been targeted for such “cloning,” as indicated by the sender’s having received “a second friend request” from that account.

The problem is, the message is completely pointless, unless the party that sent had in fact received a second request from you.

Snopes went on to point out, even if the warning were real, the optimal approach would not be for the recipient to forward it to every single contact on their friends list. Snopes goes on to say:

This message played on warnings about the phenomenon of Facebook “pirates” engaging in the “cloning” of Facebook accounts, a real (but much over-hyped) process by which scammers target existing Facebook users accounts by setting up new accounts with identical profile pictures and names, then sending out friend requests which appear to originate from those “cloned” users.

If you have indeed ever been a victim of cloning, the correct action is to use Facebook's Report This Profile section.

Whatever you do, please stop sharing this nonsense.

 

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