Is Facebook too popular? Chain letter claims social network is deleting accounts

I was contacted by a Naked Security reader earlier today about a message he had received from his Facebook friends, informing him that the social network was deleting inactive accounts.

Here’s the rather oddly-worded message he received:

To be on Facebook recently became too popular.

There were some members who complained that Facebook is becoming very slow. The recordings show that the reason is that there are too many non-active members and of the other one quoted too many new members on Facebook.

We are sending these messages to see if the members are active or not. If you are active, please send this message to 15 other users by using to Copy + Paste to show that you are very active.

Those who will not send this message in 2 weeks, will automatically be cancelled to create more space.

Is it true? Well, of course it’s not. Deeper investigation reveals that versions of the hoax message have been spreading for…

Read more in my article on the Naked Security website.

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Graham Cluley •   @gcluley

Graham Cluley is a veteran of the anti-virus industry having worked for a number of security companies since the early 1990s when he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows. Now an independent security analyst, he regularly makes media appearances and is an international public speaker on the topic of computer security, hackers, and online privacy. Follow him on Twitter at @gcluley, on Mastodon at @[email protected], or drop him an email.