Meta has reportedly fixed a bug in Facebook that automatically sent friend requests whenever users visited a profile.
According to The Daily Beast, the Mark Zuckerburg-led tech giant has apologised for the glitch after several Facebook users complained about the massive privacy breach on the social media platform.
“We fixed a bug related to a recent app update that caused some Facebook friend requests to be sent mistakenly. We’ve stopped this from happening and we apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused,” a Meta spokesperson was quoted as saying.
One user posted on social media, “Facebook letting your stalkers be known today!” while another called it “the funniest thing Facebook has ever done”.
According to some users, Facebook sent a request to a person they were attempting to block, the report mentioned.
Several Facebook users also stated that they had deactivated their accounts.
As per reports, the bug was reported by users from Bangladesh, Philippines, and Sri Lanka.
Meanwhile, Meta has said that it had discovered malware creators who are taking advantage of the public’s interest in ChatGPT and using this interest to entice users into downloading harmful applications and browser extensions.
The news was also confirmed by cybersecurity firm CloudSEK, which revealed that fake ChatGPT pages on Facebook were being used to distribute malware. The scammers took over a Facebook account or a page, and tried to make it look like an authentic ChatGPT page, by changing the username to “ChatGPT OpenAI” and setting the ChatGPT logo as the profile picture, followed by running Facebook ads offering links to these supposed ‘latest version of ChatGPT, GPT-V4’.
When someone was downloading this ‘ChatGPT version’ by clicking on the link sent by the fake Facebook account, it was resulting in the activation of a stealer malware into the victim’s device, compromising his/her data security.
CloudSEK also said that its investigation revealed 13 fake Facebook pages/accounts dedicated to spreading the malware. Together, these accounts had around 5 lakh followers.
Meta has compared this phenomenon to cryptocurrency scams, as both tactics exploit people’s curiosity and trust to gain access to sensitive information.
The company said they have found around 10 malware families posing as ChatGPT and similar tools to compromise accounts across the internet.