Thousands of Facebook users have been receiving strange fake friendship requests in recent weeks.
Many of these fake profiles often appear to belong to scantily clad women.
Now Facebook is encouraging everyone to report fake accounts – while at the same time providing us with a simple trick to avoid this type of friend request in the future.
It seems like the idea is to lure men into connecting with unknown women by accepting their friend requests.
They want the person in question to click on a link to a site looking for more visitors.
Or a request for fake friends could be part of a more advanced fraud, where scammers try to obtain your personal information or hijack your account.
Here’s how you can prevent receiving fake friend requests:
Many people find it really annoying to get fake friendship requests repeatedly.
Facebook still needs to find a way to completely win the war against these hackers.
However, it is possible to block friend requests yourself – something Facebook recommends to all its users.
Under your privacy settings on Facebook, you can choose to only allow friends of friends to send you friend requests.
This will prevent someone who doesn’t have at least one mutual friend from sending you a friend request. However, it requires none of your friends have accepted a request from a fake profile.
Facebook says it removes one million fake accounts per day. This includes profiles they can clearly identify as fake by using false profile names, for example by using someone else’s name and images.
If you want to report an account, enter the profile in question and click on the three dots at the bottom left of the cover photo and click on the link.
Let’s share this information so more people can learn this trick to avoid fake friend requests in the future!
