29 December,2015 08:28 AM IST | | Agencies
The fraudulent Facebook post by its founder claiming that he will be giving away 10 per cent of his shares went viral
Mark Zuckerberg
New York: Did you come across a Facebook post claiming that Mark Zuckerberg would be giving away 10 percent of his Facebook shares to "people like you and me" if you could just share the same status on your wall? Well, that's a hoax.
Mark Zuckerberg. Pic/AFP
This came after Facebook CEO's announcement in late November that he and his wife Priscilla would be giving away nearly all of their Facebook shares to the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, LLC.
The hoax began earlier this month, has several variations by now, and people are still falling for it. The post claims that Zuckerberg is giving out $4.5 million to 1,000 Facebook users as long as they copy and paste a status on their profile.
Here is one variation:
"According to Good Morning America, Not a hoax! Mark Zuckerberg has announced that he is giving away $45 billon of Facebook stock. What you may not have heard is that he plans to give 10 percent of it away to people like YOU and ME!"
"All you have to do is copy and paste this message into a post IMMEDIATELY. At midnight PST, Facebook will search through the day's post and award 1,000 people with $4.5 million each as a way of saying thank you for making Facebook such a powerful vehicle for connection."
Before copy-pasting a status, it's worth quickly googling to make sure you are not being duped.
