Face Book issues

Something weird is happening. I thought it was just me and maybe I did something, but I googled it and other folks are experiencing it too.

I logged on to Facebook and right away I noticed news comments from folks I had never heard of in my Newsfeed. My account is not public, it is only accessible to real friends and I limit it to friends and I intentionally keep the number about the same as my fingers and toes.

So I checked my Friends page and there sat new folk not even in the US. A quick perusal of their accounts confirmed they have no friends known to me. They were quickly unfriended of course. During this process I learned they had allegedly responded to requests I had supposedly sent them. The interesting thing is I wasn't even near my computer at the time the requests had supposedly been sent by me.

I used an AlphaNumeric string (with shifted chars too) so I doubt my FB account was hacked.

Googling the problem I see to my horror this is a widely spread problem and scores of folk are reporting (and asking how) strangers accepting friend requests that were never sent and thereby accessing the Facebook Page regardless of the Privacy settings.

LoL, my case is mild as it only happened on the one day (so far), but some are reporting new Friend requests of unknown destination appear to be being sent every single time they log into Facebook, so every day new strangers accept Friend requests which were never sent.

There seem to be several causes ranging from something called Tokens automatically imported without you noticing them if you like certain pages, to Malware of an unknown type. Those accessing by cell phone advise that clicking on a photo of a user can also send a friend request. I say malware because one person about an hour ago has just reported on the FB Help page one of their online virus scans detected a malware and when it was removed, the sending of friend requests seems to have stopped. Unfortunately they haven't yet advised what virus scan they used, and as we all know, they all differ in what they can find. Another cause is Facebook in the early days set up a system where you can have a friend and give them remote access to your settings. If that person grants a friend request that new friend can use your friends privileges to send FB friend requests in your name. Ouch. No I never gave anyone remote sysop access to my settings page, so that isn't my problem. Sometimes if you synch your page to someone else's (such as your kids), FB automatically sends out Friend requests to all of their Friends. Investigation continues.

My advice to all is be a little paranoid about who is in your friends page by checking it now and then for unknowns and delete folks you don't know. Check your privacy settings and any token privileges you may have accidentally granted. Do not store information needed for identity theft in Facebook. Yeah, that's a problem. FB has your name and your phone and often your address. Hide that if you can.

This link allows you to manage the invites you may have sent without knowing you did so by importing contacts (or liking a page with tokens on it).