Who is Jayden K Smith? Facebook hoax fools users worldwide

Facebook users are being tricked into a sharing a hoax message, warning them not to accept friendship requests from "Jayden K Smith".

The message, being sent via Facebook Messenger, warns that the account belongs to a hacker who "has the system connected to your Facebook account".

But mass friend requests to unknown users is against Facebook's terms and conditions, and in any case a would-be hacker would not be able to hack into an account just by becoming a friend.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

This hasn't stopped the message gaining widespread traction online.

It reads: "Please tell all the contacts in your Messenger list, not to accept Jayden K Smith friendship request. He is a hacker and has the system connected to your Facebook account. If one of your contacts accepts it, you will also be hacked, so make sure that all your friends know it. Thanks. Forwarded as received."

Reports of the 'Jayden K Smith' message are popping up all over the world. "This viral message isn't smart," says Mashable, but it seems to be designed to "take advantage of a critical nexus of (the lack of) hacking knowledge."

"Many people don't know how hacking works and many people are also understandably afraid of being hacked," the website adds.

It's an old format "that often gets recycled online, with different variations of the name," says the Daily Telegraph. "The message does contain many of the elements of a viral hoax: a sensational warning, the prospect of devastating consequences, and a prompt to share it widely."

Even so, says the Daily Mirror "it is not clear what the purpose of the hoax is, other than to make people who fall for it look silly".

On the positive side, the message has spawned a number of Twitter jokes and memes: