Facebook Hoax

Happy 2016! I hope everyone had a wonderful, safe and happy holiday season. But now I'm depressed. I hate when it's all over. Sure it's a bit stressful and crazy during the holidays but I love the feeling inside that I get during that time of the year. I love that it's something different and exciting. Then when it's all over, it's just back to normal and it's so hum drum to me! But it is what it is.

As I was wondering what to write about this morning, I got an instant message through Facebook from my sister. I thought this was very odd since I've never gotten one from her before. We just email each other all the time. So I didn't answer her, instead I sent her an email asking her if she'd sent me one.

Now, why should I have to do that? Why should I be skeptical? The answer is because Facebook is getting to be a huge hoax for the rotten people in this world. Don't get me wrong, Facebook is a fantastic means to stay in touch with old friends, family, writing connection

s and all kinds of good reasons. But it has gotten out of hand.

In the last six months or so, I've been getting all excited because I get a message every morning telling me I have 1 new like and 4 new views. Huh? Everyday? How can that be? It's because someone out there is viewing our pages and trying to steal our accounts.

Also in the last six months, I've received a bunch of friend requests from people I'm already friends with, however it's always someone I'm not quite sure of. And instead of double checking to see if I'm already friends, I just accept. Then I instantly get a message from them saying "Hello, how are you?" When I got the first one, I thought How odd. But I answered back. One person said this, "I've been busy trying to win the lottery." I thought why do I care that this person I've never really talked to is playing the lottery and why are they telling me this?

So I wondered if this was some kind of hoax. So although I never really spoke to this person, they owned an ezine that I sent a story into so I asked them how the ezine was going. Then they said fine but spelled the name of their magazine wrong. I immediately knew something was up. Especially when they asked ME how long they'd been in business!! So I immediately deleted them.

Anyway, I've received several of these but have learned to never accept another friend request without checking to see if we're already friends.

I wanted to pass this on to anyone out there that may not know about this hoax. Never accept a friend request without checking first. One sure sign is if it's someone you think you may already be friends with and they only have a couple of friends themselves. It's a sure sign.

I don't know why these people are doing this or what their trying to accomplish but my guess is they are trying to get people's personal info or trying to get them to send money.

What I don't understand is why Facebook can't do something about this? They take it upon themselves to decide what posts we might want to see and from whom, but they can't stop these types of hoax's from happening? It's so irritating that I'm friends with all these people, but facebook only lets me see certain peoples posts because they want to control that!

If I didn't need facebook to help market my books, I'd be off it. It would make me sad because I do love when things go right and I can stay in touch with people I wouldn't ordinarily have a chance to communicate with, but it's really getting more of a hassle than it's worth.

How do you feel about it?