Facebook sends automatic friend requests when users visit profiles, Meta apologises for the bug

By Divyanshi SharmaRecently, social media was full of users complaining about Facebook sending requests to random users on their behalf. The glitch was being widely reported on Twitter, with people sharing screenshots and videos of what was going on. Turns out that it was a bug on Meta’s behalf and the company took due notice of the same. In a statement, Meta apologised for the inconvenience that the bug might have caused to users and said that the bug had been resolved.

Facebook sends automatic friend requests

On Friday, a number of Twitter users complained that Facebook was sending out requests to the profiles they had visited. While some users were concerned about their privacy, others joked about it. As per reports, the bug was reported by users from Bangladesh, Philippines, and Sri Lanka.

The company was quick to take note of the glitch and apologised for the same, saying that it had been fixed. The tech giant shared a statement with The Daily Beast that read, “We fixed a bug related to a recent app update that caused some Facebook friend requests to be sent mistakenly,” a Meta spokesperson told the outlet. “We’ve stopped this from happening and we apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.”

Scam targetting users on Facebook

Facebook has often been exploited by scammers for targeting innocent users for their malicious purposes. In March this year, a scam was reported in which Facebook pages were being used to spread malware to victims’ systems.

A research by CloudSEK revealed that fake ChatGPT pages on Facebook were being used to distribute malware to unsuspecting victims. The scammers took over a Facebook account or a page, and tried to make it look like an authentic ChatGPT page. They achieved this by changing the username to something like “ChatGPT OpenAI” and set the ChatGPT logo as the profile picture. They then run Facebook ads offering links to the supposed ‘latest version of ChatGPT, GPT-V4’.

However, when the victim downloaded this version by clicking on the link sent by the fake Facebook account, it actually deployed a stealer malware into their device, compromising their security. This emerged as a serious threat to users’ privacy and security, and caution should be exercised when downloading anything from unknown sources on the internet.

Moreover, CloudSEK had said at the time that their investigation revealed 13 fake Facebook pages/accounts dedicated to spreading the malware. Together, these accounts had around 5 lakh followers.