Chances Are Your Facebook Page Hasn’t Been Cloned. But…
Those pesky, chain-letter, copy and paste bandits seem to be at it again. There's this idea going around everywhere on Facebook, saying that either their, or your, Facebook page has been hacked and / or cloned, and that someone is requesting friendship again from your friends so they can "copy" your profile for some sort of nefarious purpose.
It's everywhere right now, and has come in many forms in the past. I wrote about a similar thing a while back about how you could copy and paste a status, and that it would change the way you saw friends in your news feed. And that was total bunk. So, I went to the ever-trusty Snopes.com and they have evidence of this current "scam" going around since at least 2012.
Facebook cloning is not a “new scam,” nor is there any evidence that its occurrence has increased greatly in recent days. (It also isn’t a “hack,” as the scam requires no special privileges nor breaking in to any Facebook accounts to accomplish.)
To be fair, Snopes lists it as "mostly false". Someone originally may have begun this as a way to send links to malware sites, or phish for personal info that could be used for identity theft. But in reality, the potential harm that could be caused by such an act is minimal, and is likely just someone that started sending it around for fun again.
Now, just because this is likely a steamy pile of bull crap, doesn't mean that you shouldn't take some basic precautions. If you feel funny about it, just change your password. You could also change your privacy settings on your profile, and make it more secure. Take any info off that might give too much insight into your personal info. So what if you can't get 127 birthday wishes from people you don't even know in real life?! It's far more important to have your sensitive info safe.
But really...do yourself and the rest of us a little favor. Stop hitting copy and paste, and start searching google or something instead. Maybe help stop the spread of false / irrelevant stuff online, rather than passing it on. Then, you could become a hero of the digital realm!!