14 DAY TRIAL // The riddle known as “the Great Giraffe Challenge” has become viral on Facebook over the past few days. The riddle is so popular that even pranksters have started sending out various hoax messages.
In case you’re not aware of the giraffe challenge, here it is: “3:00am, the doorbell rings and you wake up. Unexpected visitors, it's your parents and they are here for breakfast. You have strawberry jam, honey, wine, bread and cheese. What is the first thing you open?”
If you can’t solve it, you have to change your profile picture with an image of a giraffe.
One of the giraffe riddle hoaxes says that the images of giraffes set as profile pictures by those who have lost the challenge are a virus that hijacks Facebook accounts. Another one that has been making the rounds claims that Anonymous hackers are after those with giraffe profile pictures.
These Anonymous-themed scam messages read something like this:
“Whoah! Just found out that the Giraffe challenge was set up by the hacking group Anonymous. Apparently they're going to embark on a random ‘cleansing’ program which will wipe out the bank accounts and hard drives of those people who have giraffe profile pics ... A few of my mates already had it happen, so glad I cheated now!”
As Hoax Slayer highlights, these messages are complete nonsense. Anonymous is a hacktivist movement that has more important things on its agenda than hacking random users.
Of course, this isn’t the first time when cybercriminals or scammers leverage the name of Anonymous to intimidate users.
Around one year ago, experts spotted a piece of ransomware that encrypted victims’ files. The attackers tried to trick users into thinking that the malware attack was part of an Anonymous operation.