Will Smith Death Hoaxes

Story:

Actor Will Smith died while filming a movie in New Zealand early this morning – January 21, 2014 Preliminary reports from New Zealand Police officials indicate that the actor fell more than 60 feet to his death on the Kauri Cliffs while on-set. Specific details are not yet available.

The accident occurred at approximately 4:30 a.m. (UTC/GMT +12).
Additional details and information will be forthcoming.

Other Versions

At about 11 a.m. ET on Sunday (January 19, 2014), our beloved actor Will Smith passed away. Will Smith was born on September 25, 1968 in Philadelphia. He will be missed but not forgotten. Please show your sympathy and condolences by commenting on and liking this page.

Analysis:

Messages spreading heavily on Internet claim that the popular Hollywood actor Will Smith died while filming a movie. Various reports about his death have been circulating online since at least couple of years.

Hoax Stories

Hoax articles supposedly reporting the death of actor Will Smith have been around for a while. A related article on MediaFetcher.com entitled ‘Actor – Will Smith Falls To His Death In New Zealand‘ publishes an auto-generated hoax story of the actor’s death. The website is presented as ‘Global Associated News,’ but is actually a fake news website that publishes many such hoax stories, and is associated with FakeAWish.com, a celebrity fake news hoax generator.

Another website that often publishes the death of Will Smith is MediaMass.net. Again, the website publishes similar hoax stories for many other celebrities and then keeps updating their articles with facts – as if they are debunking rumors.

On Facebook

As soon as the stories of Will Smith’s death became popular, Facebook pages like ‘R.I.P. Will Smith‘ were created that added to the confusion. Even malicious Facebook apps with such death stories of Will Smith were in circulation. The Facebook users who clicked such links ended up installing the rogue app which posts the same message in their friend’s network. If you have accessed any such Facebook app, you can delete the apps and all its activity from the list of Applications in your Facebook Account Settings.

To Conclude

As of this writing, Will Smith is alive and very much fine; the reports about his death are hoax stories. If something happened to the actor, it would easily make into the mainstream news. Readers are advised not to believe everything they read online, and to check the authenticity before they start sharing. One should also be careful while clicking any such links and apps reporting celebrity deaths; they can contain malware.

Celebrity Death Hoaxes Become Popular

Celebrity death hoaxes have become very popular in recent years – as they are good source of gossip, and thereby generate huge traffic.

Paul Walker

The ‘Fast and Furious’ star Paul Walker passed away in a fiery car crash in November 2013. But few online reports and conspiracy theorists say his death was all a hoax and the actor is still alive.

Singer Tommy Torres

In August 2013, retweets on Twitter mentioning BBC Breaking News said that singer Tommy Torres has passed away after his recent show. However, no such tweet originated from the BBC Breaking News.

Many other celebrities like Justin Bieber, Jim Carrey, Celine Dion, Morgan Freeman, Natalie Portman, Tom Hanks, Chris Brown, Britney Spears, Eddie Murphy, Miley Cyrus, Tom Cruise, Paris Hilton, Kanye West, Emma Watson, George Clooney and Lady Gaga have been victims of these celebrity death hoaxes in past.