Cindy Swanson, CyberSnoop: The Case of the Michael Jackson Photo

Is that image predicting what Michael Jackson would look like at age 40 for real?

Well, yes and no. It’s not an actual photo of Michael Jackson, but it IS an actual photo from 1985 predicting what Michael Jackson was going to look like 15 years from THEN.

One of the sad things about Michael Jackson’s life…which ended this past June…was the fact that he was never satisfied with his own appearance. Jackson reportedly had plastic surgery after plastic surgery, to the point where his face was almost completely unrecognizable, and even shades lighter than his original skin tone.

Now an e-mail is circulating that shows a picture of Michael projecting how he would look at the age of 40. When the picture was published in the August 1985 issue of Ebony magazine, Michael Jackson was a handsome young black man. The projection of how he would look in 2000 showed him as a handsome 40 year old black man. The magazine couldn’t have known that Jackson would go on to totally change his appearance in the ensuing years.

So if you get that e-mail? Yep, it’s legitimate.

More in this Snopes.com story.

Cindy Swanson, CyberSnoop: The Case of the Facebook Forward

Is Facebook going to delete your account if you don’t forward a particular message?

The answer is NO…and if you get such a message on other free online services like Hotmail, Myspace, YouTube and others, you can ignore them as well.

This message has been showing up on Facebook for quite a while now, and my co-host Darren Marlar actually just got it last week. It reads in part:

“Facebook is recently becoming very overpopulated,there have been many members complaining that Facebook is becoming very slow. Records show that the reason is that there are too many non-active Facebook members and, on the other side, too many new Facebook members.

"We will be sending this message around to see if members are active or not. If you are active please send to at least 15 other users using Copy+ Paste to show that you are still active. *Those who do not send this message within 2 weeks will be deleted without hesitation to create more space.”

The message is supposedly signed by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

Snopes.com tells us that this hoax originated in 1999, but it was about Hotmail at the time...and it’s been falsely used with MySpace, Yahoo, MSN and several others.

And urbanlegends.about.com sums it up pretty well:

“Facebook officials have made no public announcements saying that the service has become ‘overpopulated’ or has ‘slowed down.’ Administrators of social networking sites on this scale don't issue misspelled and ungrammatical chain letters to their members. And even if they did, they wouldn't announce in an email that they "need to get rid of some people" to make room for the rest.

File this one in the trash bin where it belongs.”

Clearing up another internet rumor, this is Cindy Swanson, CyberSnoop…reminding you to check it out BEFORE you hit that “send” button!

Cindy Swanson, CyberSnoop: The Case of The Fake Air Crash Photographs

Are photographs of an airliner breaking up in midair for real?

An e-mail that's currently circulating shows photographs of the interior of an airplane cabin as the plane breaks up. The latest version of the e-mail claims the pictures were taken just before the Airbus A330-200 operated by Air France went down over the Atlantic Ocean while en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris on June 1st 2009.

The e-mail includes these comments: "Feel so sad for all the passengers including the extraordinary photographer, who kept his cool even in his last moments of life and took this photo. Hats off to him!!!"



Other versions of the e-mail claim the pictures were taken aboard a plane that crashed over Brazil in September 2006.

Snopes.com and other sources tell us that neither version is true. Where did those pictures actually come from?

Well, they're actually screen shots for the pilot episode of the popular ABC TV show, "Lost"! (No wonder they looked familiar to me the instant I saw them--"Lost" is one of the CyberSnoop's very favorite TV shows!)

In fact, if you look closely, you can see actress Evangeline Lilly, who plays Kate Austen, in the left hand side one of the photographs.

A Brazilian man has admitted to propagating the hoax on his blog in October 2006.

Clearing up another internet rumor, this is Cindy Swanson, CyberSnoop...reminding you to check it out BEFORE you hit that SEND button!