For many of us, browsing the Facebook profiles of people we’re not friends with is a common habit.
But so-called ‘profile snoopers’ have been left red faced following an embarrassing technical glitch on the social network.
The bug sent automatic friend requests to any profile people had viewed, meaning users were scrambling to cancel them as quick as possible.
Facebook has apologised for the issue and urged users to review pending friend requests in their activity log.
Acknowledging the issue, Facebook urged users to review friend requests in their activity log
So facebook now automatically sends friend request when you see someone¿s profile¿. We did the test with random people and if you check your friend request sent they appear there¿ #Facebook pic.twitter.com/vN7r8T1uw8
— ¿MONTSE (Taylor¿s Version) (@beachybones) May 12, 2023
A spokesperson for Meta, the company led by Mark Zuckerberg that runs Facebook, explained the issue to The Daily Beast.
‘We fixed a bug related to a recent app update that caused some Facebook friend requests to be sent mistakenly,’ the spokesperson said.
‘We’ve stopped this from happening and we apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.’
One user posted a short video of the glitch in action, with the friend request being made automatically a mere second after the user landed on their profile.
Other affected users took to Twitter and TikTok to describe their horror at making friendly contact with people they barely know, with one calling it ‘the end of stalking’.
Another said ‘it’s the ‘wrong night to go through my year book and stalk’.
Yet another posted: ‘Imagine you stalked your ex or your enemy and they received a friend request notification.’
Some users said on social media that unwanted friend requests have since disappeared.
But if you’re still you’re worried you’ve been affected by the technical defect, head to facebook.com/friends.
From here, click ‘Friend Requests’ in the left-hand tab followed by ‘View send requests’ to review the pending requests.
The bug sent automatic friend requests to any profile people had viewed, meaning users were scrambling to cancel them as quick as possible
Other affected users took to Twitter and TikTok to describe their horror at making friendly contact with people they barely know, with one calling it ‘the end of stalking’.
As any Facebook user will know, a carousel on your homepage called People You May Know displays people you aren’t friends with.
Facebook says: ‘People You May Know is a list of people who you might want to be friends with because you have things in common, like a mutual friend, school or workplace.
‘We regularly update People You May Know to improve suggestions.’
The problem is, a lot of people who appear on People You May Know tend to be people we’re just not interested in being friends with – often mutual friends that we simply don’t like.
