John Doe and Jane Doe: The Roblox Hoax That Wouldn't Die
The basics: who they are
John Doe is user ID 2. Jane Doe is user ID 3. Both accounts were created by Roblox co-founders David Baszucki and Erik Cassel on June 25, 2005, although their public join date displays as February 27, 2006 (the date Roblox standardized for the earliest accounts).
In the alpha and early beta days of Roblox, both accounts were used internally by administrators as NPCs and for testing the platform's player systems. They were not "secret hacker" accounts — they were essentially placeholder users that the founding team needed to validate features like login, friend requests, and game joining before there was a real userbase. You can see both profiles still live on Roblox today: John Doe and Jane Doe.
The March 18 hoax
Starting in February 2017, several Roblox users (including Kazok, Equillex, and others) began circulating a rumor that John Doe and Jane Doe would log into Roblox on March 18, 2017 and "hack" the entire platform. The rumor was amplified by YouTube clickbait videos featuring fake screenshots, simulated chat messages, and dark thumbnails. It snowballed into a full-blown community panic, especially among younger players, with thousands of kids locking accounts, sharing warnings, or staying offline that day.
Nothing happened on March 18. The rumor was fabricated.
On March 21, 2017 — three days later, after the panic became impossible to ignore — Roblox responded with an official blog post explaining who the accounts actually were. Roblox also cleaned the avatars and removed friends from both accounts to stop them being used in further hoax content.
Why the rumor stuck around so long
The John Doe / Jane Doe hoax remains one of the most-searched Roblox topics nearly a decade later. A few reasons:
- Account age. They genuinely are two of the oldest accounts on Roblox, which gives the conspiracy a kernel of truth to anchor to.
- The names. "John Doe" and "Jane Doe" are American legal placeholders for unknown individuals. To kids unfamiliar with the convention, the names sounded mysterious by default.
- Recurring clickbait. According to ExitLag's history of the myth, fake hacker videos featuring the names continued well into 2019, and TikTok creators have revived them periodically since.
- Online folklore loves it. The Doe accounts now appear in multiple fan-made Roblox creepypasta wikis, including the Roblox Creepypasta Wiki and the Myth Community Wiki.
What they actually do today
Both accounts are still owned and maintained by Roblox Corporation. They do not log in, post status updates, accept friend requests, or interact with the platform. Their friend lists are empty by design (Roblox cleaned them after the 2017 incident). They occasionally get cosmetic refreshes when Roblox updates the avatar system, but otherwise serve as a quiet piece of platform history.
If you search for a friend path to John Doe or Jane Doe on FriendPath, no path will be found. That's not a bug — it's because the accounts have no public friends to traverse outward from. Same situation as the Builderman account (user ID 156), which Roblox also keeps friend-less by design.
Other Roblox conspiracy accounts that aren't real
The Doe accounts are far from the only Roblox "myth" account. Others that have generated similar (false) panic over the years:
- 1x1x1x1 — a meme/conspiracy account that John Shedletsky (then a Roblox engineer) originally created as a joke in 2007
- C00lkidd — another fictional "hacker" character that exists in fan media, not as a real account
- "Guests" — not really a conspiracy, but the deprecated guest system has been the subject of many fake-haunting videos
How to search the Does on FriendPath
You can try to find a path to John Doe or Jane Doe on FriendPath, but as noted above, neither account has public friends, so the search will return "no path found" with a friendly explanation. The same is true for any account whose friend list is empty, banned, terminated, or set to private. For the long list of accounts that work great as targets (David Baszucki, KreekCraft, DenisDaily, Forstaken, etc.), see the guide on searching famous Roblox accounts.
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Try FriendPath now →Quick FAQ
What is FriendPath?
FriendPath is a free web tool that finds the shortest chain of friends between any two Roblox accounts using bidirectional breadth-first search over Roblox's public friends API. Runs in your browser, no install, no Roblox login required.
What does "degrees of separation" mean on Roblox?
It's the number of friend links between two accounts. If you're friends with someone who's friends with David Baszucki, you are 2 degrees of separation from David Baszucki. Most active Roblox players are within 3–5 hops of any famous account.
Is FriendPath free?
Yes. The web tool at friendpath.arbastro.com is 100% free, ad-supported. The public API offers 50 free calls per day with paid tiers beyond. See the API docs for details.
Does FriendPath work with banned or terminated accounts?
Yes — Roblox's friends API still returns friend lists for banned/terminated accounts, so FriendPath can traverse through them. The path is computed on the public friend graph, not on a player's active session.