If you have logged on to your Facebook account lately, you may have noticed others posting what appears to be a quasi-official, legal sounding statement that seeks to protect their information from copyright infringement.

One version of the statement reads that because Facebook may utilize software that will result in the theft of personal information, “I declare that my rights are attached to all my personal data drawings, paintings, photos, video, texts etc. published on my profile and my page” and that “for commercial use of the foregoing, my written consent is required at all times.”  The notice concludes that Facebook is forbidden from taking any action against the user on the basis of his profile and that violation of the user’s privacy is punishable by law.  The statement encourages users to copy and paste the message onto their Facebook pages or risk violations of their privacy rights.

Similar notices were posted in 2012 and are, in fact, a hoax.  When these bogus statements circulated back in 2012, Facebook responded by making it clear that users grant Facebook a nonexclusive usage license for content covered by intellectual property rights when posting such information publicly.  This policy is articulated in the Statement of Rights and Responsibilities on Facebook’s website.  Specifically, this statement reiterates that posters own all the information they post on Facebook and that they have the opportunity to control the dissemination of that content through their own privacy settings.

In the past, Facebook users have been advised to consult the website Snopes before re-posting these kinds of warnings.  Snopes has been effective in determining the authenticity of myths circulating on the Internet.  According to Snopes, this warning purports to solve a problem that does not even exist since Facebook does not claim to have copyrights to materials that posters place on social network.  In other words, contrary to this alert, Facebook does not own your media.  And, in any case, users do not have the power to alter the terms of use by simply posting a non-legally binding message.

If this latest hoax serves one purpose, it probably should be that Facebook users re-check their privacy settings and ensure that their selections are current.