Sick Children Pictures - Facebook Hoax
This is only one story about the pictures of sick children being misused on Facebook.
A Special Appeal to Facebook Users - Unauthorised Use of Baby Zoe Chambers Photograph
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One version of a hoax message that is currently circulating rapidly on Facebook features a photograph (right) of baby Zoe Chambers and her mother Julie. The caption on the circulating photograph claims that baby Zoe will receive a free heart transplant if the picture receives 1000 Facebook shares. However, this caption is a blatant lie. Zoe suffered from CHD (congenital heart disorder) and received a heart transplant operation in 2007. Sadly in July 2008 she passed away. Zoe's mother Julie is extremely upset by this cruel and totally unauthorised use of Zoe's picture.
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Details of Mr Thoms, his scam and the nefarious use of the picture, have been passed to the police. I have also reported him to the web hosting company of the three domains registered to him and am still awaiting updates.
The continued circulation of Zoe's photograph as part of this absurd hoax is causing great distress to Zoe's mother Julie. If you see this photo in use anywhere on Facebook, apart from among the profile pictures of Julie Chambers, please report it.
Garen Thoms runs the following three websites, each of which have a message stating one should "Like" the page or wait a random number of seconds before seeing the content - which in one case is nothing more than a default template.
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Home - Free Credit Guy
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A whois lookup on each of those domains reveals the following details:
Thoms, Garen
Shaw Park Lime Bottom
Ocho Rios P.O Box 840, ST Ann 99999
Jamaica
1-876-398-9339
garenhotboy@yahoo.com
Interestingly - his scam page offering "free digicel credit" (Digicel being a cell phone provider in Jamaica) has resurfaced with a new name and he is claiming he had to take it down and remove the name "digicel" but a more probable reason why is the mass reporting of the site by people in support of Julie.
One of the newspaper articles where the photo was stolen from:
Heart transplant for British toddler who suffered six heart attacks
Newspaper articles reporting on Zoe's passing:
Heart transplant child Zoe Chambers has died
Transplant girl who had six heart attacks before she was 18 months old loses battle for life
They are asking to please help spread the word.
Re: Sick Children Pictures - Facebook Hoax
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Help Us Stop the Sick Baby Facebook Hoax
Our effort to stop this sick hoax.
As we discussed in an earlier blog post, a trending and totally heartless hoax appearing on Facebook is becoming the subject of much controversy and anger on the social networking site. Pictures of babies in hospital are circulating the site under the pretence that sharing these pictures will result in money being donated to the child for medical help, or that once the photo surpasses a certain amount of shares then a life-saving operation will be allowed.
These are ALL hoaxes. Facebook, any hospital nor any charity will base life-saving operations or medicine based on the number of times a photo of a sick child is shared. This is heartless and technically impossible. In ALL cases that we have seen, the photos of sick children have been used without the knowledge or consent of the parents, which is particularly heart breaking because in at least one instance the child has since passed away. Many of the parents are aware that their children’s photos are being used in this hoax, which is of course causing much upset and anger.
Facebook, sadly, are far too slow and ineffective at getting rid of instances of these photos which are being shared prolifically, either from profile or group albums.
Help Us Stop the Sick Baby Facebook Hoax - ThatsNonsense.com
I saw one last week of a naked baby girl stating she had cancer all over her body. I reported it but not sure what happened with it.
Re: Sick Children Pictures - Facebook Hoax
