Anyone else suffering from this Facebook problem?

[FredWolfLeonardo]

For quite a while now (many months), I've been recieving friend requests from (obviously) FAKE profiles of bots/scammers pretending to be girls to bait me into their websites but I've reported them, and Facebook generally removes them pretty fast, within an hour of me reporting them.

I've talked to many of my friends and all of them suffer the same problem of getting these bots trying to get in touch. The problem is however, that I am recieving so many of these bot friend requests, its becoming a chore to report them. In the past 2 hours alone, I recieved 3 new friend requests from the fake bots, and its real annoying to always deal with them.

Anyone else experiencing a similar situation?

[Candy Kappa]

Yes it's a wide spread problem

[Prowler]

I've honestly only had that happen to me like 2-3 times iirc. And I'm pretty sure there was one time I was sent a FR by a guy.

I think you'll get them more often if you comment on public pages and people can see your name.

I know people complain a lot about that sort of stuff on instagram as well.

[FredWolfLeonardo]

I wouldn't even mind it so much if it was once every few weeks or something, but its become real annoying now, especially that I don't go on much anymore and when I do, there's a bombardment of fake profiles friend requests.

I'm not even the type to go public, and keep my stuff hidden/keep just to close friends but that doesn't seem to stop the bots.

[Prowler]

Do you happen to comment often on public pages such as commenting on news articles and links of major media companies? Because I don't see how else they are finding your profile so easily.

[FredWolfLeonardo]

Originally Posted by Prowler

Do you happen to comment often on public pages such as commenting on news articles and links of major media companies? Because I don't see how else they are finding your profile so easily.

Haven't done any of that in a milenium but I guess unliking those kind of pages could help.

Also, by the type of profiles I get friend requests from, it all seems like the work of 1-2 Plants.

[newfan]

Not happened to me yet. I think just one person who thought I was someone else. I may have only commented on a public post about once though and a 'like' once or twice.

[Prowler]

Originally Posted by newfan

Not happened to me yet. I think just one person who thought I was someone else. I may have only commented on a public post about once though and a 'like' once or twice.

I've once sent out a FR by mistake to a friend of a friend

[Mayhem]

Maybe because I don't use a photo of me on my profile, but I only tend to get one every couple weeks or so.

[Powder]

Facebook tracks your internet activity if you don't change your browser settings appropriately and/or use an extension that blocks their ability to do so. So you may be getting detected by these bots via porn sites or something.

[FredWolfLeonardo]

Originally Posted by Powder

Facebook tracks your internet activity if you don't change your browser settings appropriately and/or use an extension that blocks their ability to do so. So you may be getting detected by these bots via porn sites or something.

I think I figured it out. Using a Universitys campuses' wifi network shared by thousands of people is bound to create alot of Internet traffic to alot of different sites, attracting lots of Bots to the same IP address since everyone is under the same domain.

[IndigoErth]

I rarely get requests from fakes. Maybe it's because I'm a woman? I dunno. Though I suspect if you/someone are/is FB friends with anyone who has accepted requests from fakes then that might also be a factor (be it in this case or not) as they may automatically hit those in the friend lists of those accounts.



Only one I think that has been swamped with it before is when I made a fictional character page for the fun of it. I've cut back to only accepting obvious fans of that property (evident either by their posts or a likewise character-named account), removed those that showed no sign of it and just shouted 'fake', and restricted who could request, which has helped slow it down. The vast majority of the spam ones were 'mutual friends' of other fan-type accounts that I think just accepted anything they got, so in that case I'm sure it came from ending up on their friends list.

[TigerClaw]

Another issue I found with Facebook lately, When you post about a movie, you get a spam comment with a link to a pirated version of the movie, which is obviously fake, since that's an easy way to get infected with malware

The only work around, is to post as Friends instead of Public.

[Splinter the boss]

That doesn't happen to me. Again, I go once every three weeks just to check messages. It's acyually the first time I'm hearing of this.