Security and data protection firm Sophos has advised consumers and businesses not to forward a warning about a supposed child abduction in the US.
The hoax message poses as an Amber (America's Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response) Alert about a three year-old-boy said to have been kidnapped in a 2006 Mitsubishi Eclipse. It is being spread around the world via Facebook and Twitter, as well as through SMS text messages.
According to Brett Myroff, CEO of Sophos SA: "Hoaxes are causing a nuisance again and playing on people's emotional responses to this type of news.” He says it's all too easy for people to forward warnings to their friends, family and colleagues via Twitter and Facebook, thinking they are doing a good deed.
“This is wasting everyone's time and bandwidth. Simply Googling the 'warning' would reveal that it is false," Myroff explains.
The Amber Alert Programme is a voluntary partnership between US law-enforcement agencies, broadcasters, transportation agencies, and the wireless industry, to activate an urgent bulletin in the most serious child-abduction cases.
The goal of the Amber Alert system is to instantly galvanise the entire community to assist in the search for and safe recovery of the child. The organisation has safely recovered 426 children since the programme began in 1996.
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