Waspada Internet Hoaxes

Bagi Anda pengguna aplikasi Whatsapp, pasti tau kan kalo beberapa hari yang lalu whatsapp mengalami gangguan server yang menyebabkan semua status berubah menjadi unavailable. Nah, dari situ muncullah pesan berantai kayak gini:

Hello everyone, it seems that all the warnings were real, the use of WhatsApp cost money from summer 2012.

If you send this string to 18 different on your list, your icon will be blue and will be free for you.

If you do not believe me see tomorrow at 6 pm ending WhatsApp and have to pay to open it, this is by law

This message is to inform all of our users, our servers have recently been very congested, so we are asking your help to solve this problem. We require our active users forwarded this message to each of the people in your contact list to confirm our active users using WhatsApp, if you do not send this message to all your contacts WhatsApp, then your account will remain inactive with the consequence of losing all their contactsMessage from Jim Balsamic (CEO of Whatsapp) we have had an over usage of user names on whatsapp Messenger. We are requesting all users to forward this message to their entire contact list. If you do not forward this message, we will take it as your account is invalid and it will be deleted within the next 48 hours. Please DO NOT ignore this message or whatsapp will no longer recognise your activation. If you wish to re-activate your account after it has been deleted, a charge of 25.00 will be added to your monthly bill. We are also aware of the issue involving the pictures updates not showing. We are working diligently at fixing this problem and it will be up and running as soon as possible. Thank you for your cooperation from the Whatsapp team”

WhatsApp is going to cost us money soon. The only way that it will stay free is if you are a frequent user i.e. you have at least 10 people you are chatting with. To become a frequent user send this message to 10 people who receive it (2 ticks) and your WhatsApp logo should turn Red to indicate a frequent user. Am sorry had no option!

And check now the status of every individual contact is showing : Status : error

Intinya, pengguna WA yang menerima pesan ini harus mem-forward ke teman-temannya, kalau tidak akun pengguna akan dihapus. Percaya nggak sih?

Menanggapi berita seperti ini, sebaiknya kita jangan terlalu panik. Pastikan dulu apakah  berita tersebut resmi atau hanya dibuat oleh orang yang memanfaatkan situasi. Setelah googling-googling ternyata berita itu tidak benar. Pesan-pesan berantai seperti ini memang sering dibuat oleh orang iseng. Mungkin Anda juga pernah menerima pesan berantai dalam bentuk SMS, email, atau lainnya.

Nah, saat lagi googling2 ini, saya ketemu sama satu website yang menurut saya cukup menarik. Judulnya Hoax-Slayer. Di dalam website ini, si pemilik website menganalisis berbagai email atau pesan-pesan hoax  alias bohong yang beredar di internet. Hmm..ada ya orang yang kepikiran sampai menganalisis seperti itu?. Dalam website tersebut, tertulis "tujuan dari Website Hoax-Slayer adalah untuk membantu membuat Internet lingkungan yang lebih aman, lebih menyenangkan dan lebih produktif dengan cara: membongkar kebohongan email dan Internet, menggagalkan scammers internet, memerangi spam dan mendidik pengguna web tentang masalah keamanan email dan internet".