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Michael Jordan is NOT Dead – Links in Hoax Death Message Open Clickbait Website

Fact-check by Hoax-SlayerPublished 2 min read

The original site is no longer online; links go to the Internet Archive copy.

The claim

Message being shared via social media claims that NBA star Michael Jordan has been found dead at his residence.

Former NBA Superstar Michael Jordan Found Dead In His Residence..

When the news of basketball legend Michael Jordan’s death spread like wildfire, shock was the first reaction everyone had. Consequently came inconsolable heartbreak which couldn’t have been rejuvenated.

Rated Hoax by Hoax-Slayer.

What the fact-checkers found

The claim in the message is untrue. Michael Jordan is not dead. He is alive and well. Clicking the message opens a clickbait fake-news website that includes a false report about the supposed death of Michael Jordan. If you see this message, do not click on it. The fake death message is designed simply to trick people into visiting and promoting the spammy website.

According to a message currently circulating via social media, former NBA superstar Michael Jordan has been found dead at his home. The message is presented as a news snippet that recipients can click to access the full report.

However, the claims in the message are false. Michael Jordan is not dead. The fake death message is just a callous attempt to trick people into visiting the spammy website that spawned the hoax report.

Clicking the link opens a dubious fake-news website that features the same headline as that of the circulating social media message. But, the supposed news story is spread over six separate webpages that each contain images and short segments of text related to Jordan’s supposed demise. In fact, the sixth and last of these webpages actually confesses that the story is just a hoax a via a bogus ‘update’ paragraph. But, by the time users get to this disclaimer, they will have already been exposed to several pages crammed with suspect promotional material and links to third-party websites. In fact, many visitors may not even make it to the sixth page and thus leave still believing that Michael Jordan has died.

This death hoax is just a revamped version of an earlier hoax that was circulating around November 2015. Again, fake messages about the supposed death of Michael Jordan opened spammy clickbait websites.

Celebrity death hoaxes are very common and often go viral via social media. It is always a good idea to verify any celebrity death report that comes your way before you share it on your networks. Searching a reputable news aggregator service such as Google News should quickly reveal if a circulating celebrity death report is true. Such deaths are always widely reported by the mainstream media.

Original source: hoax-slayer.netNo longer online, so this opens the Internet Archive copy.Open the archived copy
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