A common hoax that gets circulated over and over again claims that Facebook is going to start charging users a service fee. Over the years we have seen countless variations of this silliness. Listed below is a new one that is currently making the rounds:
“Hi I’m Carlos The Director of facebook THURSDAY WE ARE NOTIFIED BY HOTMAIL, HAPPENED ON THE TELE BY THE DOUBTS !! Hello everyone, it seems that all the warnings were real, facebook use will cost money If you send this string to 18 different from your list, your icon will be blue and it will be free for you. If you do not believe me tomorrow at 6 pm that facebook will be closed and to open it you will have to pay, this is all by law. This message is to inform all our users, that our servers have recently been very congested, so we are asking for your help to solve this problem. We require that our active users forward this message to each of the people in your contact list in order to confirm our active facebook users if you do not send this message to all your facebook contacts then your account will remain inactive with the consequence of Lose all your cont the transmission of this message. Your SmartPhone will be updated within the next 24 hours, will have a new design and a new color for the chat. Dear Facebook users, we are going to do an update for facebook from 23:00 p.m. until 05:00 a.m. on this day. If you do not send this to all your contacts the update will be canceled and you will not have the possibility to chat with your facebook messages Will go to pay rate unless you are a frequent user. If you have at least 10 contacts Send this sms and the logo will turn red to indicate that you are a user Confirmed … We finish it for free Tomorrow they start to collect the messages for facebook at 0.37 cents Forward this message to more than 9 people of your contacts and it will be free of life for you to watch and it will turn green the ball of above do it and you will see Facebok is now free, send 10 people to reactivate your service again without cost I already updated Facebook and have new stickers forward it to 15 666355466”
If you read the message, just the grammar and wordiness of the post seems a little odd. And has anyone ever heard of Carlos, the director of Facebook? For some strange reason, the creators of this hoax want users to send this message to their contacts.
Of course the message is a hoax. Facebook is free and always will be. It even says so on their home page.
If Facebook were to ever charge, then it would be reported on mainstream news outlets. You wouldn’t receive a private message from Carlos or anyone else. Always be sure to verify outlandish claims like this before sharing them with your friends.