Facebook hoax: What to do when you receive profile cloning message

A Facebook hoax message is going around that targets the user telling them someone cloned their account and to forward the message to other people in your friend list. Photo / 123RF

A Facebook hoax message is going around that targets the user telling them someone cloned their account and to forward the message to other people in your friend list.

The scam message reads: "Hi....I actually got another friend request from you yesterday...which I ignored so you may want to check your account. Hold your finger on the message until the forward button appears...then hit forward and all the people you want to forward too....I had to do the people individually. Good Luck!"

Facebook says there is no virus attached to the message, but that if you receive it you should just delete it, according to the Daily Mail.

"We've heard that some people are seeing posts or messages about accounts being cloned on Facebook. It takes the form of a 'chain mail' type of notice," a Facebook official said.

Facebook cloning is when someone creates an account and steals your photos and personal information and then sends out friend requests to your existing friend list to gather more personal information, or to send out scam messages from the faked account.

"We haven't seen an increase in incoming reports of impersonation (cloned accounts)," a Facebook official said.

"The volume of these types of posts isn't a good measure for how often impersonation is actually happening."

If you think you're a victim of cloning, you should check and see if there is a duplicate of your account.