Who's Suggesting All These Facebook Friends?

slfisher 3 581 Views

It's not clear whether it's an application, a virus, or Facebook itself, but in the past couple of days something is sending out large numbers of friend suggestions that the original friend didn't make.

Typically, it works like this. You have a friend, B, and a friend, C, and you think B and C would be copacetic together, or you think B and C are already friends but don't know each other is in Facebook, so you suggest that B and C become friends, and B and C each receive a message from Facebook, in your name, with the suggestion.

But something's gone haywire.

Between yesterday afternoon and this morning, I received 51 friend suggestions from two friends, including family members I would have no reason of knowing or friending. I confirmed with one of these friends thus far that she was not sending out the requests.

Meanwhile, in Facebook's Help Center, under Friends -- Suggestions, are dozens of new questions on the subject. "Some of my friends got friend suggestions from me that I didn't suggest." "Is there a virus on FB re. friend suggestions?" "Is there a virus on FB that is sending out random Friend Suggestions?" and so on.

With Facebook being battered in the media lately regarding privacy issues, some people are suggesting this is the latest move by Facebook to "help" its users become more strongly connected.

To add insult to injury, the Help Center is broken, meaning that people can't open up or reply to these questions.

There is nothing on Facebook's page about the issue, and the company has not yet responded to an inquiry.

Dani AI

Generated

A short expert summary that builds on ’s thread: a sudden wave of “suggest friend” notices was widely reported and—after early panic—security writers found evidence it was not an active virus outbreak but behaviour tied to how Facebook generates and surfaces suggestions. (grahamcluley.com)

Why this can happen (not exhaustive): Facebook’s “People You May Know” suggestions come from many signals—mutual friends, profile info and networks, groups and tags, and contacts people or apps upload. That combination can suddenly surface dozens (or hundreds) of suggestions if one signal changes (someone uploads a big contact list, a third‑party app syncs contacts, or Facebook tweaks ranking). That makes a mass spike explainable without account hijacking—but account compromise or malicious apps are still possible causes to check. (facebook.com)

Practical checklist to diagnose and stop it right now:

  • Ask the friend whose name appears to be sending suggestions to run Facebook’s Security Checkup and review active logins; log out unfamiliar sessions.
  • Review and remove unknown apps and websites that are “Logged in with Facebook” (revoke permissions, especially any that access contacts).
  • Turn off and clear contact uploading on any phones/tablet apps that sync contacts to Facebook.
  • Change passwords on affected accounts, enable two‑factor authentication, and scan devices for malware if any suspicious links were clicked.
  • If you can’t regain control or find signs of takeover, use Facebook’s compromised‑account reporting flow. (facebook.com)

Final note: ’s privacy concerns are reasonable—platforms do experiment with recommendation signals—but jump to remediation steps before declaring malware. ’s “robot” intuition points at automated recommendation logic, which is a more likely root than a classic virus in most of these spikes. If the behaviour looks like bulk posting or other account misuse, treat it as a security incident and follow the checklist above.

Member Avatar for slfisher
slfisher 0 Posting Whiz

Wow. One person is reporting he had 580 friend suggestions this morning.

Member Avatar for slfisher
slfisher 0 Posting Whiz

Facebook is claiming there's nothing wrong.

"This is neither a bug nor a virus. Friend suggestions are now mutual and
will appear for both users involved. That is, if I suggest that one person
become friends with another, both the person I suggested and the person to
whom I sent the suggestion will receive the notification."

Member Avatar for jwenting
jwenting 1,905 duckman

Of course they claim nothing's wrong. This is a typical way Facebook can use to do its own little phishing scam, find out more and more valuable private data from people to sell to marketeers and other interested parties.

Member Avatar for Ndoom
Ndoom 0 Newbie Poster

A nice question..

There is a new software type called: robot software..
It's called robot because it has some intelligence. Youtube is a good example. When you watch a cartoon (part 1 of the cartoon), in the related videos bar you will see part 2, 3, etc of the same cartoon, plus other videos that are "kind of" related to the same cartoon you are watching. I was amazed by that till my instructor told me that it was a robot software. There are different robot software depending on their use and purpose.

I hope this helped ^_^

Member Avatar for francisco81
francisco81 0 Newbie Poster

I rarely use Facebook, but 580 friend suggestions seems like quite alot

Member Avatar for slfisher
slfisher 0 Posting Whiz

Another person went on to say he'd gotten more than 1000 friend suggestions.

Member Avatar for redesignunit
redesignunit -4 Posting Pro in Training

I have also some good amount of friends in facebook profile

Member Avatar for joelchrist
joelchrist -9 Posting Whiz

Some of your friends may suggest their friends to your. it will increase the friends network.

Be a part of the DaniWeb community

We're a friendly, industry-focused community of developers, IT pros, digital marketers, and technology enthusiasts meeting, networking, learning, and sharing knowledge.

Edit Preview