Have You Fallen For The Sick Baby Scam?
It's a sad plea. A picture of a sick baby and an appeal for money or something saying that Facebook or another company will donate for every share. There is another Facebook page asking for money to help fund a heart transplant alongside pictures of a little girl hooked up to tubes.
They are all scams and they are becoming more common.
Julie Chambers was distraught after hearing that there were pictures of her daughter alongside a donation asking for to get funds for a heart transplant. The basics of the story are true. The pictures are hers and her daughter did need a transplant at one point; she received one and later died.
Before the photos were taken down, they were viewed 300,000 thousand times and who knows how much money was raised for the scam artists. Unfortunately, the scams are growing and recently a group of hoax-busting websites asked Facebook to stop allowing the spread of the "sick baby" posts and others like it.
There are other examples of the sick baby scam and they prey on our goodwill. It is so hard to see photos of children suffering and we want to do something so we press "Like", we share the images with our heartfelt comments attached.
But it's meaningless. Facebook never donates money based on views and other companies rarely do either.
If something really tugs at your heartstrings, check out one of the hoax websites such as Hoaxslayer to see if there is a mention of it. If you want to help sick children, donate to your local hospital; go to Unicef.org for ideas.
We are weak in the face of sick children, our empathy drive kicks in, which is a good thing, but clicking on a "Like" button doesn't make anything better.
Have you fallen prey to the sick baby scam?
Want more chaos? Last year, I wrote about a blogger who wrote a searing post about loving one child more.
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