Will sending a message to 20 people on Facebook let you “stay active”?

ByCraig Haley

A social media warning is claiming that unless you forward that same message on to 20 of your contacts, your Facebook account will become deactivated.

The warning provides a phone number to call if you “think it’s fake”.

If you’ve been seeing a message floating around Facebook claiming that sending a message to 20 people will allow your Facebook account to stay active, then you’re not alone. The message, below, began spreading in February 2015 and despite being an entirely unoriginal and poorly worded hoax, seems to still have managed to fool a large number of users.

Hello,we are the Facebook company… You will have to send this message to 20 people to stay active. If you dont do this your acount will be disconected. If you think this is fake please call customer support on this number: 316-691-9111 Thank you for choosing Facebook as your social media app.

Of course the message is entirely nonsensical. As we have explained multiple times on this site, Facebook have no need to send a message to people to determine which accounts are active. It is also safe to assume that Facebook are not likely to start a message with “We are the Facebook company” nor make any of the several spelling errors in the message.


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Similar hoaxes have spread in the past. For example a similar warning claimed users needed to pass on a message or risk their Facebook accounts becoming chargeable. Additionally other variants of the rumours have been altered to target users of other platforms, for example WhatsApp.

Hoaxes that implore users to spread a message in order to avoid (or cause) something to happen are decades old, dating back to even the early days of email. They’re never true, including this example.