First of all, I do not have a Facebook account and I have never ever had one. If sometime in the future I happen to create one, I’ll update it over here.
Scary. In the past two to three weeks, I have been getting 3 messages in my phone from Facebook. The message is as follows :
Click to see <name>’s photos on Facebook: http://fb.me/9zni0p6PajHjT7 Reply “stop” to stop getting Facebook texts
The number from which I am receiving messages is : +919232232665
The names of two people I know distantly came in the place of <name>. Two times it was the same message with one person’s name and the third time, it came with the second person’s name. I tried contacting these two people to see whether they had in anyway done something to trigger this sort of an action and to my surprise, one of them didn’t even know my phone number!
Why would I want to reply to something to stop that I did not ask for in the first place? It would have made sense if these people were my service providers or something. The funny thing being that I do not receive any sort of promotional messages because of having activated DND.
Still, I got this message. Really scary, if you know what I mean.
Please do let me know if there is anyone whom I can complaint to about this and make this stop.
UPDATE (24th April 2012): I happened to call my bsnl customer care and told them that this was happening. At first they said that it was something that they could not do anything about. But I kept on drilling them with questions and I even said I would raise a complaint against them. On hearing that, they told me to hang on a minute. After their private inquires, they got back to me and told me that they had deactivated it! I asked them then how the hell it came to be activated without my knowing. They were stammering and finally told me that the culprit might be the shop from where I actually took my sim card and cut the call.
So that means there is some shady deal between the telephone operators and facebook where our personal phone numbers are being shared without our permission! Have to get to the shop where I bought my sim from. Updates later folks!
UPDATE (2nd June 2012): I again received a message today from the same number saying that someone wanted to connect to me on facebook. I dialled them up again and asked them what the heck was going on. And then they tell me to type “UNSUBFB” and send it to 53733!
So I told them I had not subscribed to it in the first place and I wanted to know how this thing started coming in the first place. Obviously, they had no answer. They have told me to call them back after two hours. I’ll update the post with what happens then.
UPDATE(2nd August 2012): After a gap (in which I thought that I was done with these messages), I again received one today. I called them and waiting for 12 minutes, one guy picked up. Telling him about the problem, he forwarded my call to the senior there. I had to wait for f’ing 45 minutes before that idiot received my call!
After telling him the problem, I told him I wanted to know how this started coming. He wanted me to take “phone settings -> network -> manual -> other network” in order to stop this from happening. I told him that I was not interested in getting it stopped and that I wanted to know how it started!
Suddenly, he was like, “Hello, sir, what, i..” and he cut the call! When I tried calling again, choosing the option to talk with the customer care executive, they have this automated reply that makes us go round and round in a loop! “Press 1 for a 2 for b and 3 for c” When you press one, you get “Press 1 for d 2 for e and 3 for f”. Now if you press anything, the menu stays here itself, giving you the only option of cutting the call.
I think these guy have been bribed by someone not to give out that information.
Further updates as I continue my investigation.
A 'psycho' path. 
dude ,i have d same problem.
I suspect something fishy is going on in between the service providers and Facebook. Hmmm.. As the mad hatter said, “Curiouser and curiouser”.
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Whoah, this is some crazy stuff, I am shocked!
Shady and fishy is putting it mildly Sir!
If any of your friends have installed the facebook app, facebook has your name and phone number. Its clear in permissions, get all data in the phone, get all contacts, but cattle still using it…
Scary! Are they permitted to access the phone numbers on the phone that has their app installed? There must be some law against that…
Oh yes. Even the Java facebook app for “dumbphones” attempts to lick all contacts from the phone book, luckily most such phones will warn the user that it’s about to happen so it can be rejected. Android just activesyncs everything with facebook continously if you have that app installed – check it up. Incredibly obnoxious, but it’s facebook so what do you expect.
for me.. the world is over. If you’re scared by knowing about the phone numbers and facebook, or changing e-mail addres… idealab.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/06/facebook-confirms-changing-users-default-email-addresses-more-changes-coming.php gps etc etc etc
here, in brazil, most sites are leaving the good and old html4 or the new html 5 and using the… FBML, a subset of HTML to be embeded in facebook, view the source of sites like villaprefeito.com.br.
I have heard about the e-mail address news. But FBML? Seriously weird.
Hey………i hv d sam problem………….. recieved 2 messges in same format…that someone wants to connect on FB:http//fb.me/1Hj3BtonBrcSIAh…………and want to reply ‘Stop’ to stop getting FBtxts…….what i want to do?… please tell me….
Did you find anything?
Except for the fact that this is because of the facebook apps that our friends install on their phones, which allow that app to access the contact database on that phone, I haven’t been able to debug it further.
It might be something to do with the Facebook Messenger which got a bit intrusive lately.
Check the Permissions Tab on this app here.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.facebook.orca
The Facebook app doesn’t spam as such, but the facebook messenger scans phonebook and probably that’s the one that is sending out messages without the user aware of it.
And for the shady deals between Facebook and the Network Providers…
It’s not that straightforward for Facebook to access user information from Network Providers.
But what seems to have transpired in your case is Facebook not following the DND rules.
File a DND violation case with your network provider and see it through.
Contact MyAkosha in case you need help.
Privacy is something that most people are not really bothered about but it is something that concerns us immensely..
I don’t have a FB account either and just started getting these. Any clue how to go about stopping it yet?
See the last comment on the thread Halai. Moving legally is the only way to stop it I guess.
I am also getting the messages from Facebook and I do have the account. But each time messsage come,I am charged for it. WHat should I do?
I don’t have a facebook account(and I never will). But I got a text like the aforementioned. It’s shocking and makes you feel if our privacy is just a lie..
Crazy & shocking! Who sells our Phone numbers to Facebook. I hate it
I chaiged my adderes
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