He’s Alive, Alive Baby: Vanilla Ice Death Hoax Spreads on Facebook

You might have spotted some posts on Facebook announcing the death of rapper Vanilla Ice. Now his music career might have been under the ground for the past few decades, but the man behind the name lives--and he's cleared things up by posting a message on Twitter debunking the hoax.

It sounds crazy, but the whole thing was made up by a fake news site called Global Associated News that lets you prank friends with bogus news stories. It's not very funny, especially for the fainthearted. And it's spammy too, considering the way it's flooding users' news feeds with the fake news.

The bogus post reports that Vanilla Ice had passed away in a car crash:

Vanilla Ice died in a single vehicle crash on Route 80 between Morristown and Roswell. He was pronounced dead at the scene by paramedics responding to the vehicle accident and was identified by photo ID found on his body. Alcohol and drugs do not appear to have been a factor in this accident - June 17, 2012.

The URL that you're directed to after clicking the link has "vanilla.ice" in the subdomain. Change that to any other name, and the page updates to reflect your latest victim.

Vanilla Ice has since taken to Twitter to proclaim that he's still alive.

I don't know who's spreading this rumor about me dying in a car crash but-- IM ALIVE! I have like 30 texts, from mom family and friends.

-- Vanilla Ice on Twitter

Fortunately, this campaign here isn't dropping any malware or performing exploits with every click. But be warned against clicking random links you see on the social network, because you might just be hit with something far worse next time around.