The new Facebook hoax you should know about

There's a new Facebook hoax going around – and it's targeting your inbox.

"We're hearing that you're going to be posting to us on Facebook, it's taking the form of a 'mail chain' type of notice," a Facebook official said.

Here's what happens: you're getting a message from an existing friend. Then it says to check your account and instructs you to the message to all your friends.

But users are following these steps, but they have a duplicate profile and it is leading to a lot of confusion, a Louisiana official said.

The message reads:

Hi …. I really like you to check your account. Hold your finger on the message before the forward button appears … then hit the front and all the people you want to forward too …. Good Luck!

So what is the message theoretically warning you against? Facebook cloning.

When that happens, someone will be stealing pictures and personal information from an existing user's profile and create a second profile, "cloning" it and masquerading as that individual. They then send out their friends to the person they are cloned, or send out scam messages, according to Webopedia.

These scams have occurred en masse in the past, like in the summer of 2016.

Facebook officials confirmed that it has not been recently reported, and this most recent report was published in September.

"We have not seen an increase in incoming reports of impersonation (cloned accounts)," a Facebook official said. "For example, it is not accurate that 'almost every account is being cloned,' as one of these posts claims."

The best thing for users to do is just delete the messages they receive about this, especially if they echo the exact same language used above. If they are genuinely concerned they are the victim of Facebook cloning, they should go to the profile and report it to Facebook. People can also find tools to report fake accounts here.