Facebook problem with friend requests

June 28, 2007 9:56 AM

Facebook frustration. I am extremely new to Facebook, and got a friend request notification by email. However I see no such person in my Facebook account.

This is the email I got:

Steve added you as a friend on Facebook. We need you to confirm that you are, in fact, friends with Steve.

To confirm this friend request, follow the link below:
http://www.facebook.com/reqs.php

Thanks,
The Facebook Team

Phish URLs are obvious, and this is not one. I went to the link, and it just redirects to http://www.facebook.com/home.php? There's no friend activity listed.

Their help pages, under: "I got an email saying I have a pending friend request, but I don't see one." have the unhelpful answer "Don't let this friendship opportunity slip away! Just send the other person a friend request from your account. Alternatively, you could ask them to request you as a friend again." What a crock... why is it my job to find them when they just notified me?

And yes it may be a spammer, and in the grand scheme of things, this is a non-issue, but it does concern me if I have a Facebook profile and Facebook is broken.

posted by chef_boyardee to computers & internet (14 comments total)

Facebook isn't broken.

If you don't have account: You need to register for a new account using the email address where you received the friend request, and it'll then show up.

If you do have an account: search for that friend, and add him.
posted by ewiar at 9:58 AM on June 28, 2007

reqs.php redirects to home.php if you have no pending requests. Maybe he deleted the friend request (if that's possible), or it was a spammer and all the requests were deleted.
posted by smackfu at 10:00 AM on June 28, 2007

search for that friend, and add him.

The problem is that this is a very common surname and I don't even know where to begin finding him. The person may be legit and someone I dimly remember, but this means I have to weed through 100+ similarly named people. So the friend request apparently is not very helpful.
posted by chef_boyardee at 10:02 AM on June 28, 2007

Also, friendships in Facebook are exclusively two-way. He cannot actually add you as a friend without your consent. So in that sense, the email is a bit misleading.
posted by smackfu at 10:03 AM on June 28, 2007

If you have an account, you should be able to login, and see your pending friend requests in the top right hand corner. I imagine "Steve" was a spammer whose account got deleted before you responded to his request. Most friends request e-mails come with a first and last name.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 10:04 AM on June 28, 2007 [1 favorite]

I've experienced this before (I was the sender of the request). The only way I solved it was by having them find and add me.
posted by Meagan at 10:05 AM on June 28, 2007

I'll weigh in on the consensus side. Steve was either a spammer or deleted his account. You've done nothign wrong and there's nothing to find.

FWIW, spam and such are much more rare on Facebook than on myspace and other networks, so this shouldn't be a problem that you'll see frequently.
posted by chrisamiller at 10:09 AM on June 28, 2007

I also suspect spammer, and that their account (and thus the request) was deleted.

There is a way, I think, to cancel a pending friend request (not going to test it right now though) but unless someone "Friended" you by mistake thinking you are someone else, I can't imagine it would get used much.

Anyway, I wouldn't worry about it. Unfortunately as Facebook has opened itself up to everyone and their cousin, I've seen the number of spam/promotional "friendship" requests go way up -- I now get several of them a week. I don't even bother to login and check requests coming from people I don't know.
posted by Kadin2048 at 10:09 AM on June 28, 2007

There is a way, I think, to cancel a pending friend request (not going to test it right now though)

As far as I can tell, there is not; I went and looked at some pending friend requets, and there's no way to cancel it.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 10:21 AM on June 28, 2007 [1 favorite]

From the "friends" help topic

Is there a way to cancel a friend request?

There is no way to cancel a friend request once it has been made.
posted by jourman2 at 10:27 AM on June 28, 2007

Sorry, link is here.
posted by jourman2 at 10:30 AM on June 28, 2007

smackfu, I don't know if it's true that friendships necessarily have to be two-way. I send a friend request to someone who hasn't logged in since I sent it, and thus our friendship is "unconfirmed" by him, yet he still appears on my profile page.
posted by desjardins at 10:51 AM on June 28, 2007

Maybe someone registered a Facebook account with the email address of a listserv that you are on?
posted by Shakeer at 12:31 PM on June 28, 2007

yet he still appears on my profile page.

I think that only shows for you, and your other friends won't see him on your profile page as a friend. But I could be wrong. Facebook makes it nearly impossible to see your profile as a friend would.
posted by smackfu at 4:49 PM on June 28, 2007