‘Facebook invited a man who assaulted me to be his friend’

A woman claims Facebook sent out 100 unauthorised friend requests from her account without her knowledge, among those invited was a man who assaulted her.

Exclusive: A woman claims Facebook sent out 100 unauthorised friend requests from her account without her knowledge, among those invited was a man who assaulted her two decades ago.

The 41-year-old admin professional, who does not want to be named, said she was utterly shocked to discover the invites, which some people had already accepted.

The mum said she was alerted to the issue after receiving a disturbing message request from a man who attacked her 21 years ago.

That sparked her into logging onto her account on her computer, where she found all the invites.

“I kept getting these people accepting friend requests who I had not requested,” she said.

“Then I got a really disturbing request through my messages, through Facebook Messenger, from someone who had assaulted me in the past.”

She said the fact that people she had never met had been allowed access to her private page where they could see her personal information and family photos, was a gross breach of her privacy.

Facebook sent unauthorised friend requests on a woman’s profile.

While the man who assaulted her had not accepted the friend request, he did try and message her.

“I’ve had a lot of counselling since the assault,” she said. It was a long time ago, so I was like, ‘Okay, move on’. But it was a big shock.

“He is the last person I want messaging me or going on my page.”

The woman said her previous job, which came with high security risks, meant she had a security specialist advise her on how to lock down her social media accounts.

She said it took hours of work in the background to set those privacy settings.

She said on top of the steps she took to set up her account, she changes her randomly generated password every three to six months and uses two factor authorisation.

Since she discovered the unwanted invites this week, she has changed her password twice and is checking her ‘friends’ list every couple of hours.

Last month another Facebook user wrote on Reddit that she was suffering the same problem.

“Facebook is sending out friend requests to people I don’t want on my account and I cannot stop it,” she wrote.

She asked users whether she had been hacked or whether it was a glitch.

“I’m legit freaking out,” the user wrote. “I don’t know who all Facebook has sent the requests out to. I have a private account on Facebook for a reason and this is ruining it!”

Last year Facebook users reported a similar issue, with Meta announcing it had fixed a bug which was sending out unauthorised friend requests.

Meta was sent the profile of the Sydney mum. An investigation concluded the woman’s account was hacked.

She responded to the result of the investigation by saying she found that hard to believe.

“Why would someone hack my account to send out friend requests?” she said. “I call BS.

“I made two reports online, why has no-one contacted me to let me know I’ve been hacked?”

Meta refused to give an on the record comment.

Originally published as ‘Facebook invited a man who assaulted me to be his friend’