Fake News: Typing "on.com" Will NOT Show You Who Is Checking Your Facebook Account

Fact Check

  • by: Maarten Schenk
Fake News: Typing "on.com" Will NOT Show You Who Is Checking Your Facebook Account

Is it true that typing "on.com" will show you who is checking your account on Facebook? Nope, that's not true, it is made up and entirely false.

We spotted the claim on a Facebook page named "Breaking-News-BN", we've embedded the post below:

It was published published on March 22, 2018 with the caption "Facebook has done it again type on.com and see who's checking your account... (BN)" (archived here).

In fact, on.com appears to be a website for "dating, chatting, or shiring photos" according to the page for their app on Apple's app store. Typing their address anywhere in Facebook doesn't really do anything (beside promoting their site maybe) and it certainly doesn't show you who is looking at your account.

This claim appears to be similar to an earlier one that went viral, namely that typing "BFF" in Facebook would show you if you were safe from hackers. That claim was already debunked as fake news by TechNave:

Green BFF hacker security test on Facebook is actually Fake News | TechNave

As fake news continues to thrive online, rumours about typing BFF on your Facebook to test if your account is secure from hackers or not is actually a hoax, a lie, a fraud. It is fake news at its best (or in this case, the worst).

Don't fall for these types of hoaxes asking you to type something in Facebook: they are usually meant to artificially drive up the engagement on a post, making Facebook's algorithm think it is something important that should be shown to more people (along with the other content of the page posting it).

Type "Amen!" if you think that is a sleazy tactic...

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  Maarten Schenk

Lead Stories co-founder Maarten Schenk is our resident expert on fake news and hoax websites. He likes to go beyond just debunking trending fake news stories and is endlessly fascinated by the dazzling variety of psychological and technical tricks used by the people and networks who intentionally spread made-up things on the internet.  He can often be found at conferences and events about fake news, disinformation and fact checking when he is not in his office in Belgium monitoring and tracking the latest fake article to go viral.

Read more about or contact Maarten Schenk

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