WARNING: “98B351″ AMBER Alert Hoax Still Spreading on Twitter, Facebook

A very resilient hoax is making the rounds on Twitter and Facebook. It consists of a message that poses as an AMBER Alert about a 3-year-old kidnapped boy. The message further claims the boy has been kidnapped in a Mitsubishi Eclipse with the registration plate “98B351“, and many users have fallen for it, spreading it further via Facebook, Twitter, and SMS.

According to IT security company Sophos, the message is nothing more than a hoax, but the said license plate number is already ranking high among the most commonly searched terms on the internet, which means the hoax is working. Don’t fall for it!

A quick search on the reveals there are currently no active AMBER Alerts. Interestingly, this hoax has been making the rounds for several weeks, but – as hoaxes often do – it seems to now be resurfacing stronger than ever. An AMBER Alert is a child abduction alert issued upon the suspected abduction of a child; the best way to check if it’s real is to go straight to National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children’s website.

by Stan Schroeder from mashable.com