Claim: Facebook group "Becoming a father or mother was the greatest gift of my life" created by pedophiles to gain access to kids' photos.
Example:[Collected via e-mail, January 2010]
ATTENTION !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! do not join the group that runs currently on facebook with the title "becoming a father or mother was the greatest gift of my life" This is a group created by pedophiles whose aim is to access your photos!!!!!!!...!!!!! Please rotate ...this post to all Your Friends
Origins: This hoax about a Facebook group called "Becoming a father or mother was the greatest gift of my life" being run by pedophiles intent upon harvesting children's photos began its Internet life in January 2010.
There wasn't a Facebook group of that name in existence at the time the alert was first circulated, let alone one populated by those who prey upon children — the "alert" was merely someone's idea of a joke. However, the lure of compounding a hoax being what it is, a number of Facebook groups similarly named afterwards appeared, as other pranksters looked to add to the mayhem.
In May 2010, new life was breathed into the legpull by unknown pranksters who prefaced it with the claim that the heads-up about the pedophile-laden group had been vetted by Fox News. Offered merely as a sample of what came to the snopes.com inbox in just the space of four days, we saw this attempt to add the appearance of credibility to the warning rendered as follows:
Fox news reported
Fox 4 news reported
Fox 5 news reported
Fox 9 news reported
Fox 25 news reported
Fox 59 news reported
Fox 59 news in Indiana reported
This was on Fox News at 5
But of course Fox News (in any of its flavors) had reported no such thing.
