CHARLOTTE, NC – We’ve all seen them: long posts from someone who rarely posts much or who usually only shares pictures, so you stop and read it, and halfway through you start to realize the tone of voice just doesn’t sound right. So your eyes skip to the bottom and see the dreaded, “if you agree copy and paste this into your status!”

Or the post is a dire warning that if you don’t also copy and paste and share the message something terrible will happen to you, like Facebook publically sharing your account information.

I have been on Facebook almost as long as it has been around, and these copy and paste status updates have been around that long as well. There’s one thing I know about each and every one of them: they are always false.

See, back in the earlier days of Facebook the only way to “share” something one of your friends posted was to copy and paste.

It didn’t take long for bots and trolls to take advantage of this by spreading fake statuses.

The ones about wanting Facebook to keep your profile private? They are from the days when no one could have a private profile, and then once it was an option, every time Facebook updated, it went back to public as a default. That practice has been gone for a very long time now, yet the copy and paste remains.

The ones where you answer questions or list places you’ve visited? They help bots harvest your information to help steal your identity.

In short: don’t copy and paste.