Someone registered me on Facebook and I am spammed with friends requests

Question

I have no Facebook account. Without ever going on their site, I received an email similar to the following:

You have almost completed the registration process. Confirm your account. You might be asked to insert this confirmation code. XXXX Didn't you created an account on Facebook? Let us know.

The let-us-know-link is (obfuscating some numbers and my mail):

https://www.facebook.com/confirmemail.php?e=myemail&c=****&report=1

which seems a valid one.

Before I could even see this message my mail is full of friends request forwarded by Facebook.

Everyone can register me using my address, but why Facebook is sending friends request before me accepting the registration? Do you know if this is the actual policy? (If not, someone hacked my mail password).

Can you tell me what happens if I click on the mentioned "let-us-know-link"? E.g. will I be inserted in some marketing DB? The fact of receiving all those friend request emails, without any consent, suggests to stay far away from clicking on link that could reveal my identity to them. Now my email address is a possible invalid one, by answering I will be in their DB with a valid mail.

If I had an account I would ask them, but I don't have and don't want to have it.

Answer 1

While the problem is solved, this answer might help to understand how the problem might arise.

1. Go to facebook.com .
2. identify the form "Create an account".

3. Fill the form and as an email address try something like

    thisisatempmail@somecompany.com       
   

The address does not need to be an existing one, but somecompany.com should be a real domain.

After clicking the Create an account button, you are immediately a registered user, without a subsequent address confirmation.

That means that, despite you will see the yellow notice:

"First name", go to thisisatempmail@somecompany.com to complete the sign-up process.

you are an effective member of the community.

Note that, while there is no check to test that the address exists and that you are its actual owner, if you use a legitimate antispam email domain, such as mailinator.com, this is rejected.

Of course, when there is a real owner of "thisisatempmail@somecompany.com", s/he will get the whole inflow of notifications intended for you and, of course, the address owner does not have possibility to turn off the notifications because s/he can't access the Facebook account, since s/he does not have the account password (only the email address).

Answer 2

Confirm that the URL will lead you to Facebook. Spammers like to disguise links (and email addresses) as something else.

Then, once you've confirmed it, click on the link. Facebook is co-opted by law to refrain from retaining any new information in their database, but since someone has already entered in your name and email address, that's inside of Facebook's database.

Answer 3

Maybe you're receiving invites not because your "almost registration" to Facebook, but because your friend are using your email with this tool inside Facebook to "find friends" (sorry if it's not the exact name of the tool, I have it in Spanish)

I received a few of them also, when I didn't have a Facebook account. And the invites last a lot! When I finally surrendered and created an account, I accepted friendship with the ones that invited me long time ago (not bad, that's what fB was intended for, wasn't it? ) :-P

Answer 4

After a long long time and several attempts, including legal ones, I was able to get rid of Facebook.

There was a routine (I think) control where I had to give an approval with my (hacked) mail, which of course I didn't, therefore blocking the account hacking my address. This situation compelled them to stop ignoring me.

It seems that they also have a specific link now:
I received an email that I created a new Facebook account, but I didn’t sign up for a new account.

Here you can File a report, but they oblige you to give them your sensitive personal data and to agree to their terms of usage, otherwise you will not be able to file the report.

So this issue, after a huge stress, is finally closed. How can millions trust a company that behaves like this?

Answer 5

Another try ;-)

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/02/05/a-teen-girls-facebook-typo-led-horrified-stranger-to-get-thousands-of-her-messages/

[Kristal McKenzie, 33,] started getting regular Facebook messages intended for Katya, who appeared to be a teen girl living in Mexico. She got updates when Katya’s friends massacred baby cows in Farmville, every time Katya got poked, and whenever Katya had friend requests. Most disturbingly from a privacy perspective, she got copies of private messages sent to Katya through Facebook. “Love and miss you. I want to give you this hug :33,” reads one.
Over 9 months, McKenzie received over 14,000 messages intended for the teen girl.

She contacted Facebook’s abuse and PR departments by email but got nothing back.

She saw at least one other person complaining about the same problem on a Facebook help forum, but when she tried to post about it, her post was marked “abusive.”

She reached out to the FCC FCC and to a kids’ privacy organization that works with Facebook; the latter told her they would pass the message along to Facebook. Still nothing.

This makes me think that there are two ways to stop receiving requests:

• Click on the "Inform us" link from the first facebook mail (The one with welcome to facebook)
• Contact Kashmir Hill (the author of the article) , she gave that solution in the comments of her article.

There are many other approaches cited in that article, that didn't happen to work for the ones that tackled them, but maybe can work for you.

Good luck!

Answer 6

I have also received e-mails on an e-mail address not associated with any Facebook account. These e-mails included OP's message, but also actual messages from so called friends.

I have followed the link to a page saying Didn't sign up for Facebook with this account?, but I am still receiving e-mail notifications from Facebook.

I have marked all e-mails from Facebook as Spam, because that's what they are. Of course, if I ever need to create a Facebook account, I can easily associate it with another e-mail account.

If this solution does not work (e-mails are coming from "unique" e-mail addresses like "notification+kjdk17hw_7mm@facebookmail.com" and I expect spam filter to be hard to convince about FB anyway), I would rely on the filters to directly move the message to Trash.