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A few days ago I got a Facebook notification email that so-and-so "confirmed your Facebook friend request", where so-and-so was a name I did not recognize. Nor do I remember having sent any FB friend requests in a long time.
I logged into the FB account and sure enough, that person had been added to my friends list. I browsed their timeline and photos, and it looked like a real account, but nothing rang a bell. Nothing about their posts seemed related to my own interests. The only thing that made me feel uncertain was that that their profile pic looked vaaaaaaguely familiar; it was of a woman wearing a straw hat, and a guy, apparently at a beach but only the heads visible. I feel like I may have seen that photo before, but have no idea when, and maybe it only looks similar to some other photo I've seen in the past.
When I clicked the link to see who else they were friends with, it showed no one, so I guess they have their friends list set to private.
So then I downloaded all my Facebook data, and scanned it for her name. Nothing found.
I ran a search on all my emails and my FB notes (where I usually note down when I've sent or accepted a Friends request), and again found nothing.
I even checked my browser history; nope.
So I unfriended her.
But I still feel odd about it. Could it be someone whom I sent a friends request to a long time ago, and maybe they changed their display name (and profile URL) on FB since then?
I'm more of the belief that it was either a FB glitch, or some entity is using this method (hack Facebook to add their own fake accounts as friends to other people's accounts) to spy on people's non-public posts.
I've just thought why the profile photo might look familiar to me... maybe it was one of the "suggested connections" that FB always shows. Like a friend of a friend. So conceivably (or arguably from a hacker's point of view) I could have accidentally clicked on that part of the page sometime, resulting in a friends request being sent? But surely it would give a confirmation window before sending an actual request? Surely I wouldn't accidentally click twice, without remembering any of it?
I logged into the FB account and sure enough, that person had been added to my friends list. I browsed their timeline and photos, and it looked like a real account, but nothing rang a bell. Nothing about their posts seemed related to my own interests. The only thing that made me feel uncertain was that that their profile pic looked vaaaaaaguely familiar; it was of a woman wearing a straw hat, and a guy, apparently at a beach but only the heads visible. I feel like I may have seen that photo before, but have no idea when, and maybe it only looks similar to some other photo I've seen in the past.
When I clicked the link to see who else they were friends with, it showed no one, so I guess they have their friends list set to private.
So then I downloaded all my Facebook data, and scanned it for her name. Nothing found.
I ran a search on all my emails and my FB notes (where I usually note down when I've sent or accepted a Friends request), and again found nothing.
I even checked my browser history; nope.
So I unfriended her.
But I still feel odd about it. Could it be someone whom I sent a friends request to a long time ago, and maybe they changed their display name (and profile URL) on FB since then?
I'm more of the belief that it was either a FB glitch, or some entity is using this method (hack Facebook to add their own fake accounts as friends to other people's accounts) to spy on people's non-public posts.
I've just thought why the profile photo might look familiar to me... maybe it was one of the "suggested connections" that FB always shows. Like a friend of a friend. So conceivably (or arguably from a hacker's point of view) I could have accidentally clicked on that part of the page sometime, resulting in a friends request being sent? But surely it would give a confirmation window before sending an actual request? Surely I wouldn't accidentally click twice, without remembering any of it?