Is Prince Obinna Solomon a Facebook hacker? Fact Check

Online messages warn readers not to accept a Facebook friendship request from a person called Prince Obinna Solomon since he is a hacker, and accepting him will result in a reader’s Facebook account getting hacked.

FALSE

An example of this message as it appears on social media is below.

Be careful: I got a message from you or it shown on your wall here.. Please tell all the contacts in your messenger list not to accept friendship request from Prince Obinna Solomon. He is a hacker and has the system connected to your Facebook account. If one of your contacts accepts it, you will also be hacked, so make sure that all your friends know it. Thanks. Forwarded as received. Hold your finger down on the message. At the bottom in the middle it will say forward. Hit that then click on the names of those in your list and it will send to them THIS Is REAL

The message above is just the latest in a never ending thread of poorly worded fake hacker warnings, of which we have discussed countless times on this site.

In keeping with tradition, the message is worded almost identically to past iterations, with only the name of the alleged hacker changed.

This includes the illogical and nonsensical claim that accepting a friend on Facebook allows them to hack your device, and that a hacker “has the system connected to your Facebook account”. To reiterate, this makes no sense.

Again, to go over past advice offered numerous times on this site, you cannot get automatically “hacked” (whatever that is meant to mean in this context) just by adding a friend on Facebook. While we – of course – don’t recommend adding strangers on social media since it gives them access to the information you share, it doesn’t afford anyone any special ability to compromise your account or your device.

And again, like we’ve said before, the additional assertion in these messages that assert if a Facebook friend accepts the alleged hacker, that also means you will be hacked as well, is another claim that is entirely baseless.

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Sure, don’t add strangers on Facebook. It’s not a good idea and could very well come back and haunt you. Especially if you’re sharing far too much information about yourself on your social media profile. But these warnings simply make no sense. There are no phantom hackers with specific account names that you should avoid at all costs. All messages of this ilk are nonsense.

Soon after the above warning spread, an adapted version (below) also circulated social media.

DO NOT under any circumstance accept friendship request from Prince Obinna Solomon. He is a hacker and has the system connected to my Facebook account. If you accept a friend request, you will also be hacked You would know if we are already friends on Facebook. Do not accept duplicate friendship requests so make sure that all your friends know it. Thanks. Forwarded as received. Hold your finger down on the message. At the bottom in the middle it will say forward. Hit that then click on the names of those in your list and it will send to them. This Is REAL

This message is also nonsense, though it does vaguely allude to a genuine threat – Facebook cloning. This is where crooks create a duplicate account of Person A by creating a new account with Person A’s name and profile picture, and then sending friend request to all of Person A’s friends, in the hope those friends will think the friend request is person A and accept it, making them a potential victim to a number of different scams.

But in the context of the message above, this makes no sense. Unless a person just so happens to already be connected on Facebook to a friend called Prince Obinna Solomon, the reference to not accept a “duplicate friendship request” makes no sense. The warning is so awful, not only in its grammar and spelling but also the core sentiment, that is should not be circulated either.