The latest in a long running and sick hoax to hit Facebook comes this photo of a girl in hosptial that is being passed around the social networking site with a caption falsely claiming that sharing the photo will invoke donations for the child.

Not only are these complete hoaxes, but the image of the sick child has certainly been taken without the permission of the child or family and used in this way. The photo above is the latest example in a string of photos of sick, injured or disabled children that have been used to perpetuate such hoaxes.

These hoaxes are sick because they needlessly exploit both the photos of sick and injured children and the time and effort of the people trying to help, just for some sick enjoyment on behalf of the hoaxer.

If you see any photos like the one above along with a caption imploring users to share the photo it is important that you do not share or like the photo, otherwise you are playing right into the hoaxers hands. Rather you should report the photo to Facebook so they can remove it.

The identity of the child in the photo is currently unknown.

We have - along with several other anti-hoax websites including Hoax-Slayer, the Bulldog Estate, the FB Privacy&Security Guide and Facecroooks - spent considerable time trying to educate users about these hoaxes and what to do if you encounter them, so we all implore our readers to either share this page with your friends or pass along this simple advice - do not share these images, report them instead.

For more information you can read our blog post on the subject here.

UPDATE: According to one of our sources the photo is of a young girl named Dagmar Valerie Stahl and was taken when she was recently in hosptial with pneumonia. The photo was taken by her father who is a professional photographer and the photo had been sold as a stock photo. Other pictures of the same girl can be seen at the fathers website here.


The Internet, and social networking sites like Facebook, are perfect platforms for spreading untruths, misinformation, rumor and propaganda. Thousands of inaccurate, exaggerated, deceptive or just plain false messages are circulated every single day.

For the anti-scam community to successfully tackle this plethora of false rumours, it is important that anyone who uses the Internet be able to identify false rumours and fully understands the possible consequences of spreading false information.

We have a two part blog post that helps provide this information. Part 1 deals with how to spot and debunk Internet rumours and Part 2 deals with the reasons why you should never circulate false information.

Additionally if you have fallen for this rumour or have Facebook friends that have, you can join our growing Facebook page here.