14 DAY TRIAL // Another sick baby hoax is making the rounds on Facebook. This time, the scammers try to trick users into liking, sharing and commenting on the scam posts by claiming that Facebook and CNN will donate money to cover his medical expenses.
The hoax posts, spotted by Hoax Slayer, read something like this: “Please Dont Ignore ! His parents can't afford surgery so facebook and cnn are paying half of the expenses. 1like - $1. 1comment - 10$. 1share - 100$.”
Of course, CNN and Facebook are not giving any money, no matter how many comments, shares or likes the post gets. Instead, the scammers’ goal is to harvest likes and generate traffic to their Facebook pages or to third-party websites.
In this case, the photo of the sick baby is taken from a 2012 blog post.
If you come across such messages, don’t like them, don’t share them and don’t post any comments. Simply report them to Facebook and inform the friend who posted it that it’s nothing but a hoax.
Unfortunately, from my own experience, I can tell you that Facebook will not always remove such posts. A few weeks ago, I reported an image of a sick child and Facebook informed me that there was nothing wrong with it.