Facebook Donates $3 to Rose Prater Every Time a Photo is Shared-Fiction!
Summary of eRumor:
Facebook will donate $3 to Rose Prater, a baby girl who suffered severe burns, every time a photo of her is shared.
The Truth:
This scam has been around for a long time.
A post claims Facebook will donate $3 to Rose Prater every time that a photo of the badly burned baby girl is shared, but that’s not true.
First, the baby girl shown in the photo isn’t named Rose Prater. Her name is Ola Kuchma, and she was burned in a 2005 fire at her home in Poland. Ola survived thanks to donations made to her family, but scammers immediately latched onto the tragedy, according to a Polish news report.
Scammers first used email campaigns to steal donations from Ola’s family. Then the scam spilled onto social media. Early versions of the Facebook scam said the baby’s name was Alexandra. Later, her name was changed to Rose Prater.
This type of scam has become known as a “sick children hoax.” Users are shown a heart-wrenching photo of a sick or injured child and are told that donations will be made every time it’s liked or shared.
In reality, Facebook never donates money to a cause based on the number of times a post is shared or liked, according to the website:
People are exploiting these children by spreading their photos without the parents consent. Please do not share the photos – report them instead! Please share with your friends to raise awareness on this issue.
What do the scammers get out of sick children hoaxes? They are sometimes a clickjacking scam:
Clickjacking, also known as a “UI redress attack”, is when an attacker uses multiple transparent or opaque layers to trick a user into clicking on a button or link on another page when they were intending to click on the top level page. Thus, the attacker is “hijacking” clicks meant for their page and routing them to another page, most likely owned by another application, domain, or both.
These type of scams can also be used to hack into Facebook accounts so that scammers can post spam and advertisements from your profile.