'Private photo public' scam appears on Facebook

This morning (March 19), many people shared statuses with dozens of lines saying that Facebook is about to reveal users' private information. However, the above information is just a hoax and according to the newspaperGuardianof the UK, it appeared in June 2012, resurfaced in October of the same year and has been spreading again now. Many other international news sites believe that Facebook's announcement is fake news.

In the messages shared by Vietnamese users, the language used is unnatural, like using a translation tool, such as Google Translate.

To make it more convincing, the hoax also cites a number of laws and the Rome Statute, claiming that it protects users from Facebook’s unauthorized use of their images. However, in reality, the Rome Statute is a legal framework established by the International Criminal Court that deals with genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes, and has nothing to do with copyright and privacy violations.

The scam also encourages people to share it by saying that "if you copy and repost this article on your personal page", user data will be protected. For this reason, the scam has attracted many participants and has continuously appeared on Facebook accounts in Vietnam in recent days.

Privacy is one of the issues that users are concerned about recently, especially after Facebook's scandals about the use of personal data. According toGuardian, when using social networks, users have accepted Facebook to use photos and public content in the way the company wants. To protect, users can only limit sharing or not share publicly on this platform.

Previously, Facebook also had a scam commenting "Bisou" to check whether the account was secure or not. According to experts, the scam was created on social networks mainly to attract interactions and likes.