AARP Eye Center
Check Out Posts Before You Share
By Jen Reeves, November 27, 2012 01:14 PM
There's a Facebook post you may have seen again and again over the past week. It's a post your friends are copying and pasting from each other without checking to see if it's true. It looks something like this:
Anyone reading this can copy this text and paste it on their Facebook Wall. This will place them under protection of copyright laws. By the present communiqué, I notify Facebook that it is strictly forbidden to disclose, copy, distribute, disseminate, or take any other action against me on the basis of this profile and/or its contents. The aforementioned prohibited actions also apply to employees, students, agents and/or any staff under Facebook's direction or control. The content of this profile is private and confidential information. The violation of my privacy is punished by law (UCC 1 1-308-308 1-103 and the Rome Statute.)
It's untrue. All of it. And if you searched Facebook privacy, you'd probably see an old post from Mashable talking about how the posting is fake this past summer. (The site posted another warning.) Or a wonderful go-to site is Snopes. Here's what that site had to say about the Facebook privacy posting. This is similar to a growing trend I watched on many different social media platforms during Hurricane Sandy.
When you signed up for Facebook, you agreed to the site's terms and services. Whenever Facebook changes its terms, it alerts you and gives you a chance to leave the site if you disagree with the changes. The last time it was revised was in June of 2012.
JEN'S SOCIAL MEDIA TIP: If you see posts many of your friends are sharing on a social media site, use a web search tool (like Google or Bing) and find details about it before you reshare it.