Old hoaxes never die. They don’t even fade away. I recently received this message from a relative via Facebook.
It claimed to be urgent news from Glen Eagles Hospital and alleges that seven women have died after inhaling free perfume samples. It goes on to warn you not to use any free samples.
It says to send the message on to all of your friends and family members and claims to be from the Office of the Chief of Police, Office of Risk Management in Washington DC.
This is an old hoax that first started making the rounds via email back in 2001 or so. There are a hundred reasons I could tell you this was a fake before I researched it. The first being that law enforcement agencies don’t issue alerts by telling people to forward emails or Facebook messages. The second is that if this were really happening it would be all over local and national news 24/7 and the top headline on every news website you visited. It would not be something that you had to warn people about through forwarding messages. But I researched it anyway with just a few moments of using the Google. Let’s find out if there’s an Office of Risk Management in DC.
There is, but it’s not at the address listed in the message. And it doesn’t have anything to do with the police. It assesses workplace safety.
What about Glen Eagle hospital? Yes, there are several in Asia. And you can find articles dating back 12 or 13 years where each of them refutes any involvement with this hoax.
If you google ‘has anyone been killed by perfume samples,’ you’ll find an endless supply of articles about this hoax.
Please, please, please, check stuff out before you forward it. And on an additional note, don’t use FB messaging for stuff like this. If you wouldn’t call someone up and tell them this personally, don’t send it to fifty of them in a bulk forward. Share it on FB if you must but a message is more akin to a call.