Facebook is not closing down on March 15

NEW DELHI: If you spend a better part of your life living out of Facebook, rejoice. Facebook won't be closing on March 15 after all. Surprised? Read on ...

More than one million people have already fallen for a hoax that claims that the popular social networking site will be shutting down on March 15.

According to IT security firm Sophos, a bogus news story published by the "Weekly World News", said Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg had told reporters that "managing [Facebook] has ruined my life. I need to put an end to all the madness."
Some panic-stricken Facebook users and mischief-mongers spread the story far and wide across the internet in no time. Although Facebook debunked the hoax via its Twitter account late on Sunday, users still continue to pass the bogus messages onto their online friends.
The "Weekly World News" article went on to quote another company official, Avrat Humarthi, vice-president of technical affairs at Facebook, as saying "After March 15th the whole website shuts down. So if you ever want to see your pictures again, I recommend you take them off the internet. You won't be able to get them back once Facebook goes out of business."
Sophos said that many people would not believe the report, which comes from a newspaper that has previously reported George Clooney is running for president and that alien spacecrafts will visit earth in 2011. However, it only takes only a small number of people to think it might be possible to turn a joke of a news story into an internet hoax as has been proved many a times in the past few years.
"I certainly wouldn't disagree that users would be wise to have their own backup of their photographs, rather than rely on Facebook -- but it's nothing more than a scare to suggest to people that they have to do it before March15th because Facebook is going to close down," explained Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos.
"There's an important lesson here -- don't believe everything you read on the internet, and think twice before you pass a story on to your friends."
Although a hoax is not as serious as malware worming its way between users and stealing information, it's still a nuisance, clogging up communications, increasing the overall level of spam and perhaps leading people to make decisions for the wrong reasons.