Nigeria is getting a bad name when it comes to email, and now that reputation is spreading to BlackBerry Messenger as well, in the form of broadcast messages. Earlier this year, a broadcast BBM message was sent out informing BlackBerry users that Nelson Mandela had died. This turned out to be a hoax. Yesterday a more serious and frightening message was broadcast.
Just got this now, 16:40 today 14/07/11 on Al-Jazeera network.....Lord help us! NASA reports tsunami alert on the west African coast (gulf of guinea) following a quake offshore Malabo (equatorial guinea). 20 meter high tides reported heading towards the coast of Lagos, Lome and Accra.
Needless to say, sending out false reports such as this is not funny, and in fact caused a lot of panic for people. Expert meteorologists determined that there is no tsunami or earthquake, and that the message is a hoax.
I don't know a single person that actually likes getting a broadcast BBM, and to get ones that are clearly spam, hoaxes, or plain false information is even worse. Every couple of weeks new threads pop up in the forums from people who have received fake broadcast BBMs supposedly from RIM saying their BBM is about to be deactivated. These messages are simply not true, and pointless. Make sure before you spread a BBM to all your friends, you check the validity of it, and if you're tempted to send a broadcast BBM to all of your contacts, you may want to consider any implications arising if they forward it to their contacts, and they forward to theirs, and so on.
To discuss the recent Nigerian hoax message in the forums
Source: IQ4News
