Earlier today, some BlackBerry users received this SMS alert asking them to forward on the BBM message to their contacts to maintain their BBM service. The SMS alert claims that the message was issued by RIM.

But obviously, the message was a hoax. Here’s an information alert posted by the BlackBerry Asia Groups in Facebook.

Rest assured that this BBM message did not originate from RIM and that it does not impact the security of BlackBerry smartphones. It is simply a hoax chain message. Unfortunately, many social networking applications face this scenario, whereby any message, including a hoax message, can be forwarded to a user from one of their contacts. We recommend that users simply ignore the message and do not forward it.