No, hackers cannot post on your Facebook wall without you seeing it

A meme shared thousands of times on Facebook warns the website’s users of a supposed hack where sexual content can be posted on their walls without their knowledge. The claim, which has been widely shared for years and in various forms, is false.

Facebook told AFP that content can’t be posted on an individual’s wall in a way that cannot be seen by them.

This version of the post published on January 7 has garnered more than 5,300 shares on Facebook and says the content posted by hackers can be seen by a person’s friends—but not by the account-holder themselves.

Multiple versions of the hoax can be seen posted here as early as 2011 and here in 2015.

Rudi Dicks, a senior cyber security specialist at BDO South Africa, told AFP the creators of such memes don’t gain much from posting them.

“These misinformation notifications have been around for as long as the internet has existed with early examples appearing in the form of mass emails which encourage you to notify everyone in your address book about ‘misinformation’. The attackers gain no benefit out of these emails other than to see their work shared on a massive scale,” said Dicks.

Dicks said he was not aware of any proof that a post can be made on your wall that others can see but you can’t. “A far more common and likely scenario is that an attacker (or more often a friend) gets access to your logged-in Facebook account and posts on your wall as you,” he added.

However, that would be seen as a normal post, and could be deleted by the account holder as well.

A Facebook spokesperson confirmed this to AFP: “This appears to be an old meme that attempts to spread false claims. Contrary to the meme’s claim, people can’t post on your timeline in a way that your friends can see but you can’t.”

Dicks suggests using the Facebook activity log to see everything that has been done from your account.

“You should also always be careful not to click on links from unknown senders which could lead to compromise of your device or Facebook account,” he added.

Facebook also encourages people to report suspicious content using its Help Center. — Agence France-Presse