Queen Michael said:
I've been thinking about sending friend invites to strangers just to see if they'll accept them, but I haven't actually gotten around to it. Maybe other people did.
Aye. Since I am amongst those that would never, ever open a Facebook account with their real name, I see it as nothing more than an interesting business and a bit of a playground.
The majority of my 'friends' are random strangers with which I interact. Some require me to play silly games so they can water their poodles, grow their berries or do other random, tedious stuff I would never understand. Some ask for help making decisions, which I feel obliged to answer by rolling dice or reading tarot cards to them. It seems to amuse them to some extent.
A bunch of strangers have meanwhile become acquaintances. Had sex with a bunch of them, cooked for others, played MTG with others. I see part of Facebook as the responsible adult's version of Tinder. It might be a shit box of chocolates, but it's still good fun. Since I sprinkle it with love, chaos and utter randomness, it's actually not half bad.
As for OP:
Gorfias said:
What's up with friend invites from strangers on facebook?
I've gotten a number, usually from reasonably pretty women who appear to have started a facebook account, added 2 pictures and that is it.
Is this a social media hack? Any way for them to post a photo and imbed a malicious macro?
Easy enough to ignore but what are these things?
1) bots that want to study you as a prospective mark, to send you promises of treasures and rip you off one way or another
2) bots that just want to get your data to put into their collection of data which they will then scan for useful data or just sell on to other shady folk who are in the market of buying random data.
3) random people playing Facebook games, they need your help in hatching that egg, growing that plant, feeding that pony
etc. etc. etc. etc. ad infinitum.
4) lonely people
5) crazy people
6) me.
As for malicious payload... nah, I doubt there's much code to be had there these days. Chat seemed potentially harmful years ago. Phishing and social engineering (attempts) will probably cover most of the potential immediate threats.