Did You Get Fooled by This Facebook Hoax?

There's a hoax making the rounds in Facebook, and it concerns your photographs.

One message is popping up on everyone's feeds declaring that Facebook is using his or her pictures without the consent of the poster, according to wnem.com.

The message reads as follows:

"I do not give Facebook or any entities associated with Facebook permission to use my pictures, information, or posts, both past and future. By this statement, I give notice to Facebook that it is strictly forbidden to disclose, copy, distribute or take any other action against me based on this profile and/or its contents."

The law that is mentioned is "UCC 1-308-1 1 308-103" and the Rome Statute. Snopes.com, which acts like a rumour basher, says that it is not related to privacy or social networking.

The post continues: "the content of this profile is private and confidential information. This violation of privacy can be punished by law."

It then says that other users can copy-paste the message in their status in order to fall under copyright protection laws.

Unfortunately, this hoax has been doing the round for many years. For instance, there are many such claims that go back to 2012.

Facebook continues to aver that it does not own user photos. Its terms include enabling Facebook users user-set privacy settings. This is what it says:

"For content that is covered by intellectual property rights, like photos and videos (IP content), you specifically give us the following permission, subject to your privacy and application settings: you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook (IP License). This IP License ends when you delete your IP content or your account unless your content has been shared with others, and they have not deleted it."

Moreover, users can follow the privacy or copyright terms agreed upon during the Facebook signup. Putting up the so-called "legal notice" in a status update would only negate the terms, according to Snopes. Users are after all already covered by copyright laws.

There are a number of options for users who do not agree with Facebook's terms and conditions, according to Snopes. It point out that people can simply not just sign up and "negotiate a modified policy, lobby for the social media site to change its policies through its governance section or cancel their account".