This morning, I noticed that my Facebook feed was awash with people posting links to a hoax clickbait story about Jaden Smith “coming out” or deciding to get a sex change.
The title of the link is pure clickbait, designed to draw people in:
Young actor Jaden Smith, SON of famed actor Will Smith. At early age 17 sadly announces that he is… [the rest of title is cut off]
The summary description reads:
This is a decision I made on my own, but I hope this doesn’t affect my parents decision to assist me with this financially, giggled Jaden
A screenshot of the spam.
My presumption is that this link is being sent by a virus or that the website in question is forcing people to share the link before they can read the story or see the video (I’ve seen this in the past).
That, or they are tricking Facebook users into giving them the required permissions to automatically post to their walls.
One Facebook user wrote:
Hi friends and family. If you are getting posts from me about Jaden smith coming out, please know that it’s not me sending it. I have no clue how this is happening. Thanks.
Another user wrote:
Account was hacked earlier. The two posts about OJ Simpson and Jaden Smith are bogus, so don’t open them. Apologies to any that did. I changed my password so it should be sorted. Thanks.
I think it is fair to say that you should ignore these links if you see them on your Facebook feed. If you have been fooled into posting this hoax story, then I would suggest that you:
- Run an anti-virus scan.
- Change your Facebook password.
- Review the applications that you’ve accepted permissions for and remove anything that you aren’t familiar with.
- Log out and log back in again.