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Facebook Fights Social Spam with “Mark You Don’t Know” Response to Friend Requests
January 11th, 2010
| By Eric Eldon | 16 Comments » |
With more than 350 million monthly active users around the world, Facebook has a lot of users who want to make new friends. And now the company is testing out a feature to make friending a little more meaningful. Once you mark “ignore” on a friend request, you’ll see a new option in addition to being able to report the person for abuse or spam: “Mark that you don’t know” them.
Facebook has never shown friend rejections; rather, the person who made the friend request just never gets a confirmation. Some people don’t seem to get the hint, though, and make multiple friend requests to people they never get friend confirmations from. The new appears to make it so that the recipient can block future requests from the person. Like the long-time option of blocking all application notifications from a friend, it’s another way to reduce the social spam generated by poor etiquette on social networks.
Facebook doesn’t say exactly what happens when somebody gets marked as not known. “Our security team is currently just testing this feature to help inform certain limits on friend requests and combat spam,” a spokesperson told us.
Like a spammy app, it sounds like Facebook has some sort of limit it is testing out on how many friend requests a user can send over a given time. Also, the site is becoming a larger target for automated spam and phishing attacks, and one tactic is for spammers and scammers to set up fake profiles and friend people — this points to another use for the “mark you don’t know.” If used by enough people, it could help alert Facebook to problem profiles early on before they can cause too much damage.
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January 11th, 2010 at 5:13 pm
That option has been there for a long time as I can remember.
January 11th, 2010 at 10:45 pm
[...] lets you identify strangers who attempt to friend you, according to a report published today by the Inside Facebook blog. Facebook confirmed it’s testing the feature in an email to [...]
January 12th, 2010 at 12:41 am
[...] Inside Facebook Blog: Facebook has a lot of users who want to make new friends. And now the company is testing out a [...]
January 12th, 2010 at 1:40 am
[...] lets you identify strangers who attempt to friend you, according to a report published today by the Inside Facebook blog. Facebook confirmed it’s testing the feature in an email to [...]
January 12th, 2010 at 2:06 am
[...] lets you identify strangers who attempt to friend you, according to a report published today by the Inside Facebook blog. Facebook confirmed it’s testing the feature in an email to [...]
January 12th, 2010 at 4:37 am
[...] a friend request then that request is, effectively, rejected. However, according to the folks at InsideFacebook, the social network is currently working to add options that will allow users who have opted to [...]
January 12th, 2010 at 5:42 am
[...] lets you identify strangers who attempt to friend you, according to a report published today by the Inside Facebook blog. Facebook confirmed it’s testing the feature in an email to [...]
January 12th, 2010 at 6:40 am
[...] anteprima su Inside Facebook la descrizione della nuova opzione di Facebook: “Mark you don’t know”: servirà a selezionare [...]
January 12th, 2010 at 10:15 am
[...] forward to make new friends. You can have many reasons as to why you rejected someone’s request: Spam, abuse already with the latest reason which says that you don’t know [...]
January 13th, 2010 at 7:34 am
[...] Leider können wir auch jetzt noch nicht sagen, welche Funktion hinter diesem Link versteckt ist. Und auch Facebook mag nicht bei der Aufklärung helfen. “Our security team is currently just testing this feature to help inform certain limits on friend requests and combat spam,” ist die offizielle Stellungnahme gegenüber Inside Facebook. [...]
January 31st, 2010 at 7:48 am
please ican open my facebook
March 24th, 2010 at 6:11 am
That’s great! But can’t you like…delete those people after they’ve been marked as strangers too often? I hear that’s what LinkedIn does and that would be exactly what those retards deserve!
April 1st, 2010 at 6:19 pm
maybe is way my Facebook account has been temporarily suspended !
i send a invitation to all my homailt & gmail contact
i was a facebook memeber for 3 years lost all friend i made on facebook
facebook = appel
…………
this is the msg i got form facebook ( Your Facebook account has been temporarily suspended because our systems detected that you engaged in abusive behaviour.
)
anyone can help get my account back ?
April 30th, 2010 at 10:02 pm
[...] [...]
June 11th, 2010 at 5:26 pm
What does it mean if a checkmark appears over a friend request? I have never seen this before. Does it mean it was read? Thanks
June 26th, 2010 at 10:06 am
[...] anti-spam controls. Facebook has been fighting back via a number of means including the ability to report friend requests from people you don’t know and even through lawsuits against significant [...]