Does your cell phone have a name on Facebook?

Messages are circulating on Facebook that claim your cell phone has a name on Facebook.

The messages claim that in order for a Facebook user to discover the name of their phone, they need to enter the last three digits of their phone number into a Facebook comment enclosed by square brackets.

An example of these messages can be seen below.

Your CellPhone has a name!
Take the last 3 digits of your number (e.g. xxx-x123_.
Type it like this: @[123:0] in the comments below & hit enter!

Previous examples have claimed it’s your SIM card (as opposed to your cell phone) that has a name –

Did you know your sim card has its own name? Try this trick :
1st step: from your number take the last 3 digits of you phone number for example : 0123 456789, take 789 only
2nd step: type this number as shown in this example in the comment box below @*[789:0]
3rd step : remove the sign * as shown below and press enter in the Below comment box!
(it doesnt seem to work if your number has a 0 in the last 2 digits)

What is going on?

Firstly, as many have no doubt deduced, this has nothing to do with your phone or your phone number whatsoever. Entering 3 digits into Facebook isn’t going to give you your phone’s name. Your phone doesn’t have a name (in this context.)

Secondly, this won’t work for everyone, and that depends on the device you are using Facebook on when you enter these digits. It is unlikely to work for Facebook desktop users who will have a blank space automatically entered after the @ symbol after they hit enter.

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What’s going on is that this is some Facebook “shortcode” for displaying the name of the Facebook user/page associated with a particular ID number. The ID number is the three digits you are told to enter (from your phone number) but in reality this shortcode isn’t limited to three digits.

Every Facebook user and page has a unique ID number, though you may not know yours since it isn’t information Facebook gives you easy access to. So for example, if you enter @[102:0], that will display the Facebook user with the ID number 102. Similarly, if you enter @[10324348945454:0], that will display the user or page with the corresponding ID.

If you enter an ID number with no corresponding profile (for example, the profile was deleted) then Facebook returns a simple 0 value.

So what you’re seeing is some Facebook “shorthand” with little obvious value. It doesn’t have anything to do with your phone, SIM card – and despite the claims made by a similar rumour – it doesn’t show you if you’ve been hacked.