Facebook was sending automatic friend request to users on visiting any profile; Meta apologises, fixes bug

Facebook has acknowledged a bug that caused the social network to automatically send friend requests to users when they visited other people’s profiles. The social media company said that it’s patched the glitch.

“We fixed a bug related to a recent app update that caused some Facebook friend requests to be sent mistakenly,” a Meta spokesperson told the media company. “We’ve stopped this from happening and we apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.”

The bug affected both the desktop and mobile versions of Facebook. When a user visited another person’s profile, the social network would automatically send a friend request without the user’s consent. The bug was reported by users from Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Philippines.

Facebook has apologised for the bug and said that it has been fixed. However, it has not revealed the cause of the bug

This is not the first time that Facebook users have to worry about their data privacy. In 2021, the social network was hacked by a hacking forum, risking private data of over 500 million users. In 2018 also, the platform was hit by a data breach that exposed the personal information of millions of users. Facebook has also been criticised for its handling of user data, and it has been fined by regulators in the United States and Europe.

While Facebook says that the bug is fixed now, it is advisable to follow basic privacy and safety guidelines while accessing the social media platform. Avoid accessing your Facebook account from unknown devices and if done so, make sure to log out properly. Do not accept or send Facebook requests to unknown people. Never click on any suspicious links or ads.

A week ago we read reports of hackers imitating verified Facebook pages and lacing these fake pages with harmful links and websites.