How your ex will KNOW if you’ve been stalking their Facebook: Embarrassing glitch exposes

For many of us, browsing the Facebook profiles of people we’re not friends with is a common habit – whether it’s exes, colleagues or distant relatives. 

But so-called ‘profile snoopers’ have been left red faced following an embarrassing technical glitch on the social network. 

The bug sent automatic friend requests to any profiles people had viewed, leaving users scrambling to cancel them as quickly as possible. 

Facebook has apologised for the issue which was triggered by an app update, and urged users to review pending friend requests in their activity log. 

One social media user called it the ‘funniest thing Facebook has ever done’, while others called it ’embarrassing’ and ‘awkward’. 

Acknowledging the issue, Facebook urged users to review friend requests in their activity log

A spokesperson for Meta, the company led by Mark Zuckerberg that runs Facebook, explained the issue to The Daily Beast. 

‘We fixed a bug related to a recent app update that caused some Facebook friend requests to be sent mistakenly,’ the spokesperson said. 

‘We’ve stopped this from happening and we apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused.’ 

One user posted a short video of the glitch in action, with the friend request being made automatically a mere second after the user landed on their profile. 

Other affected users took to Twitter and TikTok to describe their horror at making friendly contact with people they barely know or don’t like, with one calling it ‘the end of stalking’. 

Another said: ‘It’s the ‘wrong night to go through my year book and stalk’. 

Yet another posted: ‘Imagine you stalked your ex or your enemy and they received a friend request notification.’ 

Some users said on social media that unwanted friend requests have since disappeared. 

But if you’re still you’re worried you’ve been affected by the technical defect, head to facebook.com/friends. 

From here, click ‘Friend Requests’ in the left-hand tab followed by ‘View send requests’ to review the pending requests. 

One affected user said ‘it’s the ‘wrong night to go through my year book and stalk’

Another posted: ‘Imagine you stalked your ex or your enemy and they received a friend request notification’ 

As any Facebook user will know, a carousel on your homepage called People You May Know displays people you aren’t friends with.

Facebook says: ‘People You May Know is a list of people who you might want to be friends with because you have things in common, like a mutual friend, school or workplace. 

‘We regularly update People You May Know to improve suggestions.’

The problem is, a lot of people who appear on People You May Know tend to be people we’re just not interested in being friends with – often a friend of a friend that we simply don’t like. 

Admittedly, this doesn’t stop us from clicking on their profile to have a little snoop on what their life is like, but the glitch has essentially punished this habit. 

The bug sent automatic friend requests to any profile people had viewed, meaning users were scrambling to cancel them as quick as possible

‘See you in another life’: Users were left embarassed by the glitch, which punished the common habit of ‘profile snooping’ 

Fortunately, when you delete a friend request on Facebook, the person who sent you the request won’t be notified 

Bizarre glitches on social media platforms tend to occur when engineers roll out changes or make tweaks to the user experience.  

Another highly humiliating Facebook glitch last year resulted in user feeds being flooded with posts from strangers sharing content on celebrity pages. 

For example, memes shared by randoms to the official Facebook page of US rapper Eminem started appearing on people’s homepages. 

The problem appeared to stem from a technical issue with Facebook’s internal systems determining which posts appear in users’ news feed.