6 Facebook hoaxes you’ve probably seen so far in 2018

Martinelli virus spreading through WhatsApp

When? April

This hoax has been spreading for a while, and while it mentions WhatsApp, it actually spreads prolifically across Facebook too. It claims that a video “comes out tomorrow” that will “hack your phone in 10 seconds”. Various incarnations of the hoax exist, dating back to 2017, and they’re all complete nonsense.

We discuss the hoax here.

Typing “following me” into Facebook reveals your stalkers

When? January

This 2017 hoax had a brief resurgence in early 2018, and still claimed that Facebook users could see their “stalkers” by typing “following me” into the Blocked section of their Facebook settings. Apparently Facebook not only assigns your Facebook account its very own stalkers, it also provides a very handy way of allowing you to see who they are!

Needless to say, the hoax made no sense in 2017 and still doesn’t in 2018. In reality this hoax was just a continuation of an older theme about “finding your stalkers” that replaced “following me” with equally arbitrary text. See our article here.

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Typing BFF into Facebook shows your account security?

The winner so far in 2018 is this completely absurd claim that typing BFF into the Facebook comments of a post reveals if your account is at risk. Like many hoaxes, this is just the latest version of similar hoaxes that claims equally spurious nonsense, such as the claim that typing @[4:0] would reveal if you had “been hacked”.

In reality, BFF is part of Facebook’s “text delight” feature which highlights certain words or acronyms and provides a brief animation each time you click them. Nothing to do with account security. We discussed it here.

How many of these hoaxes have you seen? Let us know. And as usual, we’ll return at the end of the year to give you the most popular hoaxes over the last 12 months, so stay tuned.