How to Prevent Bots From Sending You Friend Requests on Facebook
Since January 1st, I start every morning by dropping about a dozen Facebook friend requests, all from people I don’t know.
I’m not really sure why all these great new bots, many of which don’t seem to speak English, are suddenly interested in my virtual friendship, but I know their presence is pretty annoying.
If you, like me, are having a spam of these friend requests spam, you can quickly and easily make them quieter: change your privacy settings.
Facebook has a privacy setting that lets you control who can send you requests. By default, it allows everyone, even bots, to send requests to you.
From your desktop, sign in to Facebook and click the down arrow in the upper right corner of the page. From there select “Settings” from the dropdown menu.
Select “Privacy” from the left column menu to open the site’s privacy settings and tools.
From there, click the Edit button next to Who Can Send You Friendship Requests? to customize who is allowed to request a place on your friends list.
Instead of “Everyone”, I recommend changing the settings to “Friends of Friends”.
Assuming your friends weren’t friends with the bot, changing this setting should prevent you from being friends.
Worth noting: It also makes it so that the real people you meet while you’re away from home won’t be able to send you a friend request if you don’t already have a mutual friend.
It doesn’t really matter to me because most of the “new” friends I make are usually people I met through another friend, but if you’ve just started a new job or moved to a new place and are trying to make new friends , changing this parameter means that you will need to initiate this friend request, and not vice versa.
However, if you are bombarded with spam requests, this is a small price to pay.