It pains me that I have anybody on my list of Facebook friends that would even consider this chain-letter for a minute…  Today I (along with 14 of my other “closest” friends) received the following message:

Attention all Facebook users
Facebook is recently becoming very overpopulated,
There have been many members complaining that Facebook
is becoming very slow.Record shows that the reason is
that there are too many non-active Facebook members
And on the other side too many new Facebook members.
We will be sending this messages around to see if the
Members are active or not,If you’re active please send
to 15 other users using Copy+Paste to show that you are active
Those who do not send this message within 2 weeks,
The user will be deleted without hesitation to create more space,
If Facebook is still overpopulated we kindly ask for donations but until then send this message to all your friends and make sure you send
message to show me that your active and not deleted.

Founder of Facebook
Mark Zuckerb

My reaction:  Ugh…  Do people really take this kind of thing seriously any more?  I mean seriously…  Reading the email and applying the smallest amount of commen sense would say that sending MORE messages would only serve to further burden the system, a bad idea if it were really having performance problems in the first place.

What it DID remind me of, however, is the willingness of people to believe anything without understanding where to go in order to “check the facts.”  This is a problem that the security industry is forever battling with end-users that are not very technically or security saavy.  I guess we will always still have work to do in educating our friends and neighbors.