Banned from Sending Facebook Friend Requests

I was just banned from sending Facebook friend requests. After doing some research, I found I was breaking the rules. FACEBOOK USERS ARE ONLY ALLOWED TO SEND FRIEND REQUESTS TO PEOPLE THEY KNOW IN REAL LIFE. I’ve been sending requests to people who share many mutual friends with me. All of these people were in my “recommended friends” list, but apparently sending out 50 friend requests is abusive behavior on Facebook, even though I only sent requests to people who live within 30 miles of me.

Evidently many people I tried to add to my friends reported me for spamming, because that seems to be the reason Facebook bans abusers. I’m sure this ban was completely automated, and I doubt I’m in any danger of losing my account.

Here is the message I received upon logging in tonight:

To prevent you from contacting people against their wishes, your friend requests and your ability to send messages to strangers have been temporarily blocked.

If more of your friend requests are later marked as spam or reported for being sent to strangers, this block could be extended. To prevent this, you may wish to cancel your pending friend requests. Also cancel unanswered requests?

I opted not to cancel my unanswered friend requests and I have been banned from sending new friend requests for 48 hours. Perhaps I will be banned permanently? I sure hope no one else reports me for spamming.

While I’m disappointed, I totally understand that Facebook can impose whatever restrictions it wants on me because I don’t own Facebook.com like I own Thripp.com. Perhaps my Digital Sharecropping article from 2008 was not so far off.

44 thoughts on “Banned from Sending Facebook Friend Requests

  1. I got banned today for the same reason as you, and let me say that facebook’s logic is simply far beyond my understanding. For one, why do they even put random people on your suggested friends list, and then just ban you when you actually try to friend them?. What kind of idiotic logic is that?. What is so wrong about trying to meet new people online? What the hell is a social network supposed to be for?. And to those who don’t want to receive unwanted requests, why not just set your profile to private if you dislike being friended by strangers?.. if you care so much about your personal information being shared with the world, then why do you even put it up on the internet for everyone to see?…

  2. Seriously the Fb people are hopeless. They lie each step of the way and they blame us for the things that they themselves do. FB is allowing people to be stalked at each step stealing private information we have not consented to like our phone contacts and our email contacts from over the years. It sends those people who may or may not remember us representations like “Priya has joined Facebook, accept her friend request” and then when those people (maybe a placement agent or an estate agent I had sent an email to 10 years back) give feedback that they don’t know or remember me, I get banned saying I am doing antisocial harassment behaviour. Facebook also claims we have PRIVACY and can hide friend lists, but all the time it sends these behind our backs. I have more than 50 friend request I could not answer back to or accept because over last month I was in hospital and two months I have not used my FB id and still I am banned for supposedly doing what FB is going around doing behind my back. FB has also stuck one of my friends outside her own account because sex-crazed maniacs were chasing us on FB and made fake complains to FB of us being fakes. They did not manage to do much to me, but my friend is permanently stuck outside her account. All in all FB is a paradise for stalkers, Identity -thieves and run in such a manner that your children and most women cannot hide from or escape anti-socials who decide to got to the FB platform to chase them. In fact FB will print your phone number out openly and keep advertising to all strangers forever that you are on FB and have suggested they join it. Then they penalise and scold and harass us. Its a subtle way of starting to blame you before you blame them and to shame you before you start to shame them. I have suffered two nervous breakdowns because of not being able to hide or delete myself from the Facebook site with sex-crazed maniacs on my trail. Thank you Facebook, oops F***book!!

  3. I think there should be a new kind of face book made -i wish i could make one!were you can make freinds with anyone- and only get banned if your really harrassing people with rudeness…fb is crap!!!!they put all these people up as people you may know–as if what a tease -then you send out and get blocked for 7 days..its a great tool for the government to watch people as well..when really the people should be watching them ,the corrupted scum bag clowns.!!! but ya FB is not very nice to do this .. we need a real social network that is fair ..then run FB out !!!!!!!!!!

  4. Recently I had 2 people out of nowhere while using facebook asking to be friends, they had no friends and where Christians in there profile looking for friends – complete strangers, not wanting to be unfriendly I accepted, knowing I could remove them later, as I have done with others – because facebook gives me the option.

  5. It wrote this to me:

    Do you know the people you’re sending friend requests to? You’ve been sending friend requests to people who don’t know you. Facebook is a place for connecting with people you know well, like: Family, Classmates and coworkers, People you know personally (I am stuck here unless I agree – check the box > I understand that if I send friend requests to people who don’t know me, I could be blocked.)

    Cancel Pending Friend Requests

    Most people cancel their pending friend requests to avoid being blocked from sending requests in the future.These people haven’t responded to your request. Would you like to cancel these? (Part of these people are relatives and people facebook asked me to accept – I could have 100’s of people asking to be friends, yet now facebook asks me to refuse them after expecting me to accept them – very strange)

  6. HI, im trying to send a facebook friend requests because I made a new account, and my plan is to add my friends as in “real friends” on my old fb account but a code was asked to me,, and whenever i enter it, i send requests then i will be askes to enter a code again, but i really have lots of known friends and i just want to add them,, pls help me.. :(

  7. 30 days ago, I saw a little box that stated that I would have a 30-day ban on sending friend requests because I sent many requests to people I don’t know. They were incorrect. During the previous four days, I sent five friend requests. I know four of those people, and I’ve known three of them for at least four years. My ban ended today, so I sent a friend request to someone I’ve known for almost four years. I box came up and said, “You continue to send friend requests to people you don’t know. You have another ban for four days and four hours.” I emailed the administrators and asked why they think that I don’t know that man.

  8. I have been banned from sending friends request…what really bothers me and I don’t understand is that I’m sending them to people who have asked me to…I’m getting messages about the facebook policy stating that I send requests to people I don’t know personally…which, to be quite honest I rarely do…however, I sometimes meet a person briefly through others or just in general and they mention facebook, give me their name and ask me to send them a friends request…then when I do I get penalized for it…I’ve personally decided that I will not send any more requests to anyone…not people I’ve known for years, all my life, or even family…..so I just wanted to let you know that this will no longer be an issue on my part…

  9. this happened to me when I merged my phone contacts with my account. I’ve also added people that were suggested and I was pretty sure I know. I’ve had one account disabled and have another account now under a different name, because when I remade one in the same name it was disabled for no reason.
    This is getting ridiculous and is very frustrating. I’ve been trying to make my own network but know it’ll never match up to them, or the dozens of other ones. Why ban people for doing what FACEBOOK suggests they do?

  10. Is there a way to find out who or which friend request reported you or complained

  11. Surely we don’t have to accept this passively/ How about class ligation.? Or a mass resignation (if a suitable substitute an be found)?)

    Also, I don’t seem to noticed any protests on other media. Does the world beyond, know or care what happens to dedicted FB users? Has a facebook reply been issued since these protests started?. If so, where can it be found?

    • It says right next to the names to add friend….It looks to me that facebook is specificly telling you to add friend. So when I read Add friend I did as I was told and did it. Then I get blocked?? Yeah I think a class action lawsuit is in order.

  12. :help: :sadness:

    What the F… is going on here?

    Today I, . too, received a set of thinly-veiled warnings and specific commitments from Facebook (herafter FBK).. These included, in essence, a request ( “ticked off” IN ADVANCE by FBK, though erasable, to delete a handful of friendship requests made the past few days. (To be fair, another two, more palatable options, both as yet unticked, were offered) .

    In essence, the ticked off sentence sought to commit me to request only ‘authentic’ acquaintances to share my timeline. (Not the exact words, I admit, but the core of the request).

    Perhaps because I was a journalist for many years (South African Press Association, McGraw-Hill World News (Bonn) and Financial Times Energy Newsletters, UK), I don’t really take these requests at face value. Rather, they’re an empty threat, a self-destructive, panic-induced PR cover-up for negative media coverage of sporadic user abuse of FBK.

    [There’s no conceivable way in which FBK – already resembling a Big Brother – could further monitor and/or arbitrarily select/reject applications without conceivably running the risk of violating the US constitution or major subscriber losses to rival, albeit smaller online social forums .

    Or am I being naive?

    At last count I had 18 contacts, incl. nine relatives, and four long-time friends, Since joining FBK last August I made a a dozen or so very-rewarding ‘friend’ requests, subsequently deleting three as unsuitable

    .As sometimes-lonely member of a kibbutz in Israel, just recovering from chemotherapy, FBK has given me a new lease of lif, which I treasure. I want to keep it that way.

    On a cynical note, I hope shareholders (especially institutional investors) will now realize what a bad bet this company is and what financial damage this policy reversal will incur.

  13. :question: Ok, so f/b has a feature that says…..suggest friends for this person. so a friend suggested friends for me to add whom also play farmville. So I added them the WTF it tells me I am violation of TOS. Perhaps they should not add this feature *suggest friends for this person. Why would they suggest people I only know in real life. I mean what the hell I would have already added them if I knew them and liked them *in real life* so what gives?? :sadness:

  14. I too have been blocked for 30days and Now i cannot even send messages….But i totally understand,its just so sad =(

  15. Same story here. Last night I sent friend requests to people on my “people you may know list”. This morning I awoke to the same nasty gram from FB. It definitely seems counter-intuitive to receive a warning because I sent a friend request to people they suggested I send friend requests to.

    I understand why they are doing it. Just seems like the anti-spam meter is a little too strict. Still, not to sound like an oversensitive wimp, but the message does make you feel like you did something wrong.

    I just wish I had some insight into their formula so that I could avoid this happening again. I am going to continue to network on FB—because that is what SOCIAL NETWORKING is for!

  16. this is so stupid and unfair, i apparently send requests to people i do know from my school but one day i added regular show roleplayers just for fun, i don’t know if they ever go on or not, but that’s not the case, the case is with people i do know don’t confirm me, i don’t usually have a picture of my as my profile picture, but if i do or don’t most people still don’t confirm me, so how do i know if these people hate me or not. they don’t have to confirm me, but how do i know, if they don’t like me? everybody else from school gets to add everyone from school and they don’t even talk to them, same with me, this isn’t fair, they should tell me who ignored my request so i would remember who i sent requests too. i would not be on facebook, i only haave it because i have friends from other countries that i know personally, get it together FACEBOOK and add a feature were it tells you WHO DIDN’T CONFIRM YOUR REQUEST.

  17. my name is mohammad mubeen, i m using facebook from more then 3 years, i was send friend requests only for 7 peoples then facebook has block me 30days for sending friends requests., please unblock me as soon as possible

  18. I’ve been on Facebook for just over a year. I received a login warning about sending friends requests to people I don’t know..perhaps a week or two ago.

    All I could think was:
    (a) I’ve got around 30 Facebook friends – WTF – do I sound like a serial ‘friend abuser’ to you?

    (b) I’m **48 years old**, I have a LONG history of friends (if you are just 20 years old, consider the difference), recently I’ve been trying to find some High School friends from 1/2 a lifetime ago.

    (c) I’ve lived in three countries.

    (d) I have perhaps 2,000 people I really DO KNOW, and having worked in sales & marketing for my entire life certainly helps!

    (e) I am seperated from my wife, and a little nastiness is coming my way as she is on Facebook as well. Is this a result of her and an extensive friends list that may have some common contacts?

    And so on………

    But….even inviting a lot of people, let alone those I don’t know….it just didn’t happen!

    So I went searching for a way to locate any & all friends requests and could only locate an add-in which doesn’t seem to work in the current security context of some Facebook update, or perhaps browser settings, whatever. I spent hours manually searching for any friends requests I may have made and found about three to those I do know – and deleted them!

    Moments ago I log on and find I’ve been banned for 7 days from friends requests due to feedback that I had made multiple friends requests to people I don’t know!

    Quietly screaming here as in my country, Australia, you are innocent until proven guilty. Facebook-land is obviously not a democracy. Since the first warning I had been incredibly circumspect about any friends requests. So basicaly Facebook, or some third parties that have some grudge (e.g. wife & friends) are having a lend of me. What a joke.

    As part of this 7 day ban I had a few options about friends requests – I asked to cancel THE LOT.

    I wouldn’t be surprised to find I’m permanently banned in another week or two even if I don’t open Facebook. Something is horribly wrong here, and there seems to be no option to protest.

    • Now I find the Director of the Company I work for has taken my Social Media advice and is spending some more time on the assets I set up for him.

      So I received a ‘friendship’ request tonight for one of his alter-ego’s i.e. the Company itself. That was fine.

      Forgetting the 7 day ban, I then try to friend his personal account (which was one of many outstanding accounts with a friend request that *I DELETED* from people I know – and also know don’t use Facebook often) – Can’t do it.

      Send him a message – it’s blocked to prevent spam.

      This is…..this is what it is….Facebook is too big, like M$ at a point in history, and they think the can do anything they want.

      Facebook is certainly taking a LOW profile in any future marketing/SOE plans for the future of any of my customers. It’s just too…..strange!

    • Yes it dose give an option…It asks you that if you feel that their is a problem to send us a message as to why you fell like you should not be banned for sending friends request…If you feel that we are in error…A little box is at the bottom that you can click on and protest the action… I did once…and they removed the band manually…

    • Dear Mr Lynch, Kindly stop abusing your wife for what is evidently FBs lies and deception to the public. FB doesnt care for your rights and your truthful or not. FB does not give any support to you or listen to you. You and wife might have a nasty divorce history but FB is doing this nonsense to everyone. I posted a status that proved that FB has been drawn into court for deceitful behaviour to its own client base.
      This was my status message following which FB has now locked me out of my own FB saying that I am not logged in through the correct same browser I was logged in through yesterday, I am in an endless loop since I clicked SECURE MY ACCOUNT when FB falsely told me my account was hacked. FB is making us to suspect our friends as hackers when it is troubling us overactively and then covering its abusive treatment of us users by putting blame somewhere else… IT is FB that is cheating you Mr Lynch and not your wife though FB has this system that it allows anyone to make fake complaints and dosent care. Its happened to my friends. Holly

      I saw the message in my email saying that “This action was performed by your account: Phone Number Change on Thursday, May 30, 2013 at 9:36am If you think someone else is logging into your account, we can help you secure it with a few security steps.” This is a new scam by Facebook to get you to become paranoid and add your own private phone number to it. After you add your own number Facebook makes it public for the whole world to see. And all these messages that you are under a hacking attack or something are purely fake. In fact Facebook has admitted that it is lying and misrepresenting but dose not change its ways.

      Chek out Facebooks liar practises here in these two official statements of government or court action against Facebook and how it betrays customer trust
      http://www.onguardonline.gov/blog/ftc’s-settlement-facebook-where-facebook-went-wrong
      http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2011/11/privacysettlement.shtm

      (This phone number to be found on my profile is a number of a friend so I would have started to suspect the friend if I had not known that she herself was in hospital and not able to function for herself at all. So Facebook is itself doing these things and making us to suspect all our friends.)

  19. same problem i was just sending requests to someone who make 6 fb profiles for each character from alvin and chipmunks (just for fun) and they blocked me for sending requests then when they unblocked me i was sending request to ONE friend from my school and they blocked me again. FACEBOOK STOP BLOCKING REQUESTS!!!!!!!!!!

    sorry form my bad english im from croatia

    • i did pretty much the same thing as you, but i sent requests to regular show roleplayers just for fun, to every character in the show but must be different roleplayers, then i also send requests to people from my school i know and i get blocked because they don’t confirm me.

  20. It’s messed up last month facebook banned me for 40 days. Then the day I got back I send 1 friend request. Few minutes later it says u been banned for 30 days

  21. Do they mean it like 7 days?? I think I’m in the last day of the ban,will they extend it?? No right? I will be able to add tmrw right??

    • They go by hours….it really sucks…this is the 5th time I have been banned for 30 days this year.

  22. I have been banned for 14 days for adding friends I dont know,I am searching the Collins family,ALL COLLINS’S ARE RELATED reguardless of color according to a Harvard professor. The Collins family is the largest single family name in the world,according to the professor,there is thousands plus Collins I dont know but would like to, I dont just add any body for the heck of it,Iam looking for history-FAMILY HISTORY-Rick Collins

  23. I just received a ban which will last seven days, and I have honestly never sent a request to someone I didn’t know. At least not that I can remember.

    What the heck?! Facebook, you seriousoy fail at life. :angry:

  24. I just got banned for SEVEN days! SO much for social networking! Maybe if FB had KEPT the feature where you could send a MESSAGE with the friend request it would not be an issue!

  25. Am a big time lover and fan of facebook but was blocked for adding friends the wrong way the penalty was supposed to last for 2 days but as it is now it is 3 days yet I cannot access my fb account having tried to delete my pending requests to no success please help me to get my access back pls help me now.

  26. why i have been blocked? im using facebook for making new friends??????? its social web? and i was using some other social web. but i had no such prob? i dont know why i have been blocked. i have been blocked for 4 days? n i was blocked few days ago? i kindly request you facebook.. change youe policy,
    ? we r here 4 FUn.. nt doing some thing rubbish. so allow me to make new friends.. other wise me and my friends will leave fb? as many people has left fb bez of thier wrong polices.. so i have a request, kindly unblock me right now. and do not block me next time. thanks . best regards salman ..

    • i agree to this.i only add my friends and i got banned which i do not understand, and i got in a fight with my sister and she blocked me as her friend and now we are talking again and it will not let me add her.i am blocked for seven days

  27. Hello. I would like to know if anyone had the following issues I had with facebook. Ever since I upgraded to the new profile, friends went missing on my friend list that never removed me and then they re-appeared. I sent friend requests out and I asked one person if they got it and they said no. Also when I first click on the person to see if it is still requested there is a list. It says friend requested but when I click on them it changes to friend request sent. Also two people that I requested in the past their profile is invisible to me when I am logged on. When I log off and search for them they are visible. Is Facebook blocking all of this or the people I sent a request to?

  28. It seems that Facebook is making a bad name for itself by it’s authoritarian behaviour. It’s inherently counter-productive as well. While my 14 day ‘BAN’ is in place, Facebook certainly will not be getting any advertising or marketing opportunities out of me; and, I’ll bet their commercial marketers and adverters wouldn’t be pleased to discover that Facebook has an ever-increasing disenchanted client base. This is one way we can hit back at them .. refuse to respond to any of Facebook’s advertising and marketing. That in turn will hurt their commercial interests. While Facebook continually boasts 500 million users, maybe we should be using social-networking to group together the growing number of people with ANTI-Facebook sentiments! Any ideas?

    • Hmm, well I think the best idea is to not form divisive lines but instead all diversify our online presences across the dominant social networks and community websites such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, WordPress.com, and any other number of specialized or less general networks. It’s also important to have our own websites where no one can ban us and we must all understand spam prevention, bot prevention, and have holistic technical knowledge, a mastery of English, etc.

      However, it would be a good idea to create a group to come up with practical complaints about Facebook’s behavior and suggestions for change, with a focus on PHP implementation thereof. It may require a lot of research into how Facebook actually works under the hood. I heard they have over 100,000 servers now, which is quite a lot for 500,000,000 users — one server for every 5000 people. This means they must be doing a lot of complicated data processing.

      • Facebook is now owned publicly…It a free network that belongs to the public…That’s you and me…So why would you and me band ourselves??? Its just the way the rules was written before the owner lost the rights to the name facebook.. So now its operated by a public inity… Find how owns the sight in the name of the public and send outrageous complaints about it…If enough people complain about a public owned sight..they will be forced to do 1 of 2 things…Changed it to the public demand or close it..They have no choice because now its your tax dollar that operates the sights…!!!!

  29. :confused: till today from 4 days i have banned from sending facebook friend request .but even today i can,t able to send the rquest why .they told only 4 days.if this will continue means i will delete my account and dont use facebook any more in my future

    • Try to go back to some of the people you requested to be friends with who did not accept yet and cancel those pending friend requests.

      • Facebook has a great Idea but when Facebook will not allow a friend to send a viable message then they are overstepping their boundaries and becomming very rude. thats what happened to me when I tried to send a message to Richard Dickess my best friend Plus earlier I got a virus from a facebook of a friend when I cliked onto his page. Facebook needs to police viruses better if you are going to continue to be viable

    • Thanks, but I don’t just have the notification saying the request can’t be sent now. I actually got logged out and had to check boxes when I logged back in promising not to abuse friend requests. I’m not going to make any more friends because I’ve heard of people being permanently banned from Facebook before.

      • This just happened to me this morning…I have been on FB for a few yrs now without a problem…I sent friend requests to people that are Farmville neighbors,so I can visit their page to play the game…
        :help:

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