Who doesn't have a Facebook these days? It can be used for good, but also bad. For the Stahl family of Canfield, they are experiencing the downside to the social-networking site.
The Stahls have become concerned about a picture of their daughter floating around on Facebook. It's not the actual picture that bothers them though, it's the message that goes with it.
Years ago, when his daughter Dagmar was four or five years old, photographer Mark Stahl took a picture of his daughter when she was in the hospital with pneumonia. Dagmar is now 13-years old.
Mark, who sells his pictures to companies and said "you expect to see them everywhere" until recently forgot about the image of his daughter that he sold years ago.
That is until recently. A friend alerted Mark's wife, Diane, about the picture when she saw it on Facebook.
"She said, I think there's a picture of your daughter, Dagmar, and they're saying she has cancer," Diane said. "And they're saying every time you share the photo, Facebook will donate a dollar, I think it was a $1.20."
Dagmar is healthy teen, who does not have cancer.
"It's kind of lying to people, like they think some like girl out there has cancer, and they're going to help, but they're not," Dagmar said.
More than 100,000 Facebok users have shared the photo. Diane commented on the post, telling people it's a hoax. Other users are doing the same. Still, Diane is still concerned.
"I'm thinking of the people that are seeing this that actually believe," she said.
Fred Wolens, of Facebook Policy Communications, provided the following statement about the picture situation:
"Protecting the people who use Facebook from spam and malicious content is a top priority for us. We have spent several years developing protections to stop spam from spreading and have sought to cooperate with other industry leaders to keep users and their data safe. We've built enforcement mechanisms to quickly shut down malicious Pages, accounts and applications that attempt to spread spam by deceiving users or by exploiting several well-known browser vulnerabilities.
"We have also enrolled those impacted by spam through checkpoints so they can remediate their accounts and learn how to better protect themselves while on Facebook. Beyond these protections, we've put in place backend measures to reduce the rate of these attacks and will continue to iterate on our defenses to find new ways to protect people."
Wolens added: "In addition to the engineering teams that build tools to block spam we also have a dedicated enforcement team that seeks to identify those responsible for spam and works with our legal team to ensure appropriate consequences follow. As always, we advise people not to click on links in strange messages, even if those messages have been sent or posted by friends. This tip and many more can be found on our Facebook Security Page."
The Youngstown Better Business Bureau said stories like this are becoming popular, and users need to be aware.
"There are so many fake stories in which Facebook is supposedly going to donate to, and it's just not the case,"' said Melissa Ames of the BBB. "These are not legitimate stories."
The Stahls' are also looking into the issue. In the meantime, their cancer-free daughter wants people to know one thing.
"Not everything they see on the internet is true, and to not really believe everything they see."
