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Money donated towards a child’s kidney transplant every time her picture is shared on Facebook? – HOAX!
A friend sent me this, as they believed it, but it’s yet another of those Facebook hoaxes doing the rounds. Apparently, this girl is from Northern Ireland, and every time her picture is shared on Facebook Messenger, one UK pound will be donated towards her kidney transplant fund… even though the NHS is free in the UK and Northern Ireland. But… she’s not from Northern Ireland, and the original scam was for one dollar.
In fact, as has been confirmed by Snopes, she isn’t awaiting a kidney transplant, and as of October 2017, she was a 4-year-old Brazilian girl called Aninha, due to undergo chemotherapy for leukemia treatment in Paraná, Brazil.
While Snopes has the full picture, I’ve covered up the girl’s face because, at this point in this story, I don’t know whether the girl has survived or has since passed away. I wish her and the family well, though.
However, whenever you get chain letters like these DO YOUR RESEARCH! before sharing anything… but while I say that, too many people never listen, and just carry on anyway, and that’s why Facebook’s timeline is full of all kinds of crap.
In any event, just try factoring this in: How on Earth would Facebook be able to monitor all such messages for such a random picture, amongst all of those which are sent daily? It’s a logistical nightmare.
It’s more likely that by sharing such images, the scammers will come up with bigger schemes, next time, which will lead to your bank account being drained by scammers, or your PC or mobile getting viruses aplenty. And since lots of people clicked on the first scam, Facebook’s algorithm will initially think that the second scam from the same company has legitimacy.
In short: JUST THINK!
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.