Unrequested facebook friends

September 19, 2009 6:47 PM

Why is it that on Facebook, people can become your friend without your having rec'd a friend request? Is there anything one can do to prevent? Might it be because they're in my email address book? I save many addresses, but am not nec. their friend.
posted by neelhtak to Computers & Internet (16 answers total)

This shouldn't happen. It might be because you sent them facebook requests (facebook harvests emails from your email account) when you first created your account accidentally. If that is the case (and I can't think of any others) it won't happen again.
posted by kylej at 6:53 PM on September 19, 2009

2nding that what you describe should be impossible.
posted by ishotjr at 6:54 PM on September 19, 2009

Wow, fast response, thanks. While it is a relief to know that can't happen, it is yet another piece of evidence that the little gray cells have failed me again. : )
posted by neelhtak at 6:59 PM on September 19, 2009

It's not impossible, I have seen it happen on both my and my boyfriend's accounts. In one case, I had sent a notice to some non-facebook people about photos I had uploaded there. When they (two different people) joined, they were automatically on my friends list. I assumed the photo thing was how it happened.

In the other case, my sister friended my boyfriend, and he noticed her on his friends list, but swears he never got a friend request for her (because he would probably have ignored it). No idea what that would have been about. I don't know that he even has her email address.

Sorry I don't have a good answer for you, but I did want to corroborate your experience.
posted by cabingirl at 7:02 PM on September 19, 2009

I thought this had happened to me, but it turns out some of my (more distant) friends had just gotten married and changed their names. Perhaps that's what is happening to you?
posted by danb at 7:09 PM on September 19, 2009

It has only happened twice, but I do think it's conceivable that I sent them requests on startup day, all aglow with bonhomie. I'm not as friendly as I thought.
posted by neelhtak at 7:22 PM on September 19, 2009

I received by (e-mail) several suggestions to join back before I was on. When I ultimately signed up, I had five friends from day one.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 7:37 PM on September 19, 2009

By default you send everyone in your address book a invite. You have to uncheck the box. A facebook trick to harvest emails & encourage new users.
posted by patnok at 7:43 PM on September 19, 2009

I unchecked the box. Many months later, I got a call from my sister, asking if I'd really intended to send her a friend request that day. I hadn't sent one.

I'm suspecting that parts of the Facebook code base are a real mess, and that little hiccups happen now and then.
posted by dws at 9:03 PM on September 19, 2009

Be assured, if you're friends with someone on FB, it's because you authorized it somewhere. There's no sneaky code, no "hiccups" that happen with this stuff. Once you join, friend requests require an explicit handshake from both sides. There's a default "accept all these people (who have pending friend requests with you) as friends" state when you first sign up that you can uncheck.
posted by mkultra at 9:28 PM on September 19, 2009

It is definitely not impossible. It happened on both my account and my wife's account the day that my mother (*gasp*) joined FB. Neither of us sent an invite, and yet, there she was on both of our friends lists. We had, at various times, sent pictures to her from FB, so I imagine when she registered with that email, she was automagically added.
posted by i_am_a_Jedi at 9:36 PM on September 19, 2009

Actually to add further information, we found out about it because we received the 'So-and-so has accepted your friend request' email.
posted by i_am_a_Jedi at 9:39 PM on September 19, 2009

This has happened to me before...I noticed that someone I had never heard of was in my friends list, and on their wall were several people asking who this person was and how they became friends with them. So it's not unheard of.
posted by god particle at 10:02 PM on September 19, 2009

As far as I can tell, if you ever invite someone by email to look at photos, a group, or an event, and that person later joins Facebook with the same email address, you will automatically be friends.
posted by mxc at 10:53 PM on September 19, 2009

Yeah, I'm sorry - as much as people say "It's impossible", it's definitely happened to me - more than once. In the same way as Facebook can recommend people as friends who I have no-one in common with whatsoever (no friends of mine are friends with the recommendation), I have definitely had people appear as friend without them being invited. I think there's probably a "two-stages of separation" algorithm, and if enough of your friends are friends with someone, they get a free pass... Still don't understand some of the random recommendations though.
posted by benzo8 at 1:44 AM on September 20, 2009

It's not supposed to happen, but apparently it does. I suspect that, at some point, as others have suggested, you performed some action that you didn't think would result in a friend request, but did, and at some point, they finally accepted it.

I also have noticed that in the last week, Facebook has had some severe partitioning problems, where parts of the site are severely out of sync with one another. I imagine that that this could create all sorts of opportunities to stir things up. Which is why it is so great that they've been working hard on their pirate-talk features.
posted by Good Brain at 12:42 PM on September 20, 2009