Please help. Fake/automatic Facebook friend requests?

[gaelicsheep]

I wasn't sure where to post this. Without going into detail, I've received a FB friend request from someone DH and I fell out with a while back. I don't want this person to see my profile/updates but it could be problematic long term if I refuse the request. I understand that because the request has been made this person can now see my FB updates.

I intend to remove myself from FB because I'm sick of the uncertainties around privacy, but what should I do right now? This is so unexpected, is it possible that FB or a virus has somehow mined this person's email address book and sent out an automatic request?

Has anyone experienced this and WWYD?

BUMP. Please, this is important! Anyone?

Facebook periodically asks you if you want it to look at your hotmail/gmail/whatever and send friend requests to everyone on your contacts list, so the person may not have directly thought 'I will add gaelichseep as a friend'.

Having made the request, they can see no more of your updates than they could before. If they are a friend of a friend then they will see only things that you have set to be visible to friends of friends.

Some people allow their e-mail address books to be uploaded to Facebook (because Facebook asks them). I'm sure this is how I've received a number of "friend" requests.

Go into your privacy settings and set everything as "Friend Only", so no "friends of friends" can see anything about you.

You don't have to share updates with anyone you don't want to. In fact, you can make a privacy setting for anyone you want, and anything you post can be restricted to "true friends" if you like. I have separate settings for family, real friends, school "friends" and so on.

Your ex-friend may not even realise s/he has made this request, but even if s/he does, s/he cannot be surprised if your FB account seems rather inactive, as many people can't be bothered to update as they have things to do are too busy

If you ignore someone's friend request they are not informed that you have clicked 'ignore', they just don't hear anything. If thsomeone you have fallen out with then there will be no opportunity for them to ask 'why haven't you accepted my friend request?'

You can also block specific people from seeing you even when you have friends in common without the friends only option.

Oh OK, so if I say no to the friend request this person won't get a notification about that? Something I read after googling suggested that this person would be seeing my updates right now. I have got everything set to friends only - I think - but FB changes its settings so often that I don't trust it one bit.

I was just in the process of sending a message to everyone I want to stay in contact with saying I was deleting myself. But I know that people just don't tend to get around to emailing individuals nearly so much as posting on FB. I hate FB as a rule, I only use it for staying in touch with distant friends.

So you reckon it should be OK to decline the request and not cause trouble?

It should be. I haven't had any fiery rockets over my refusals!

You can tell when someone has rejected a friend request. Once you have requested them, you (the requestor) can see them in your friends list, showing as confirmation awaiting (or words to that effect). Once they reject you, they are no longer in the list.

One option you do have is to accept her. But to create a new friends group - called evil bitch or similar and add her to that group. You can then edit your privacy settings so that "only friends except evil bitch group" can see stuff. That way she won't be able to see status updates, wall, photos, nada.