Does typing BFF in Facebook reveal if your account is at risk? Fact Check

Rumours are circulating Facebook that claim typing BFF into the comments of a Facebook post will reveal if your account is in danger of being “hacked”.

Such messages claim that if the letters BFF appear in green then your account is safe, while if it does not your account is at risk of being hacked.

The rumours, examples below, are nonsense, and make no sense whatsoever.

Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, invented the word BFF. To make sure your account is safe on Facebook, type BFF in a comment. If it appears green, your account is protected. If it does not appear green, change your password immediately because it will be hacked.

#Mark Zuckerberg
Facebook inventor
Make sure you do not think about your page or account
Type Bff in a comment
If it appears green, your account is protected and if it appears normal, you must change the password. Try it

While it is true that typing BFF into Facebook does [usually] result in those letters turning green, this is in no way indicative of your account being (or not being) at risk. It doesn’t even make any sense to introduce such a bizarre and arbitrary method of determining if your account is at risk.

What’s happening in the case of the letters BFF turning green is that they have been chosen by Facebook as a “special” comment that, upon being typed, produce a brief visual animation to appear on the screen. The letters colloquially mean “best friends forever”, and typing in the comment shows two hands “high fiving”. Facebook has other special comments, including Congrats (or Congratulations) that turns orange and shows a brief visual animation as well. That’s literally all there is to it.

Sponsored Content. Continued below...

Why some people believe that Facebook, or Mark Zuckerberg, would introduce this as a method of determining if your account is at risk we do not know, since it makes little sense. The messages don’t describe or explain exactly how an account is at risk, rather just ambiguously states that they are.

The hoax bears resemblance to an earlier hoax from 2016 that claimed typing in #177 as a comment could reveal a green bar which indicates that your account “has been hacked”. Just like this rumour, that was also false.

The bottom line – this is a hoax. Please don’t share it or pass it on. Make sure you stay on top of this type of nonsense, and like our Facebook and Twitter pages, or sign up to our monthly newsletter here.