October 2016 Monthly Round-Up
It’s almost time to call it a wrap on October 2016, and unsurprisingly the run-up to Halloween has featured no shortage of spooky tales and creepy stories, that have been dominated by some pretty creepy clowns!
Here is the most popular and trending stories of October!
Popular
Clowns. Clowns. More Clowns.
No doubt most of you are sick to death of hearing about clowns, so we’ll keep it short. Despite the mass hysteria surrounding “killer clown sightings” during October, there were no killer clowns on the loose – though plenty of people did don the popular kids entertainer outfit to scare some people.
There were so many rumours related to this brand of nonsense (clown killing sprees… women shot after mistaken for clown… clown outfits banned… more killing sprees) that we just penned one big article outlining all the most common rumours here.
2016 election hoaxes
Given the US presidential election is next month, naturally there has been no shortage of hoaxes targeting either party. No, Trump hasn’t been omitted from ballot papers in Oregon. No, a touchscreen hasn’t been “caught on camera” auto-selecting the Democratic candidate (that video was 2 years old) and no, Clinton donor George Soros does not own the voting machines used in the election.
Dance of the Hillary virus?
Despite this hoax being a direct rip-off from an earlier hoax, it still went mega-viral and earned the top spot of the most prolific hoax of October with thousands upon thousands of requests from readers asking if it were indeed true.
The hoax claims a virus is formatting peoples hard drives or phones, and it’s called “Dance of the Hillary”. No such virus exists, and it is just a rehashed version of an earlier warning claiming the virus was called “Dance with the Pope”. We discuss the hoax here.
Please stop posting legal jargon to your timeline
We’ve lost count as to how many times this hoax has reared its ugly head, but it is YEARS old and it’s just not true at all – posting legal jargon to your timeline doesn’t alter what others can or cannot do with your posts or pics.
One more time… (doubtful)… you just cannot supersede terms of service by posting something on your timeline. The Facebook “privacy notice” is a hoax, people! You can read our article on it (again) here.
You can’t see who is viewing you Facebook profile
Another old hoax was given a modern makeover thanks to a spammy rogue Facebook app that lured people into installing it by claiming they can see who was visiting their Facebook profile.
By the way, you can’t do that. We may have mentioned that once or twice (a few hundred) times on our site, so please stop clicking links that tell you otherwise.
Royal British Legion not selling poppies because of Muslims?
This classic makes an appearance during October each year, so no surprise this is one of our most popular articles again. Again – not true. Read here.
Christmas lights are banned?
The Christmas themed hoaxes have already started, and the claim that a town in Queensland, Australia called Cardwell has banned Christmas lights for fear of offending Muslims is spreading. It’s not the first time this hoax has spread, and it’s not true.
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News
Are Twitter bots shaping the US election?
Automated twitter bots were shown to be posted a significant number of supportive tweets for both presidential candidates in an attempt to shape social media perception of the successes and failures of each. How much of an impact can these automated tweeters have on the election outcome?
DDOS attack prevents people accessing websites
One of the most widespread DDOS attacks targeted a DNS lookup service earlier this month. Learn exactly what that means here.
Hundreds arrested in India over IRS scam
A great win for the good guys in the battle against Internet scammers as hundreds of people were detained by police over a massive IRS telephone scam in India involving scammers calling victims in the US pretending to the Internal Revenue Service to extort money. Read here.