How to prevent Facebook from sending you friend suggestions

You can now disable the ‘Suggested Friends’ feature in Facebook on your Android and iOS smartphones, here’s how

Facebook, the popular social networking site, allows you to connect to people with whom you may have not been in touch for long, which also includes your family and friends.

But, have you noticed people from your Google Circles popping up as Facebook friend suggestions? In fact, even people without Facebook accounts get Facebook friend suggestions, and some of these ‘friends’ are linked into email accounts and social media.

This is because of the ‘Suggested Friends’ feature in Facebook. It basically works by suggesting old friends and casual acquaintances that you might want to add as Facebook friends.

While this feature can be annoying to many of us, Facebook has not started recommending random people as Suggested Friends on the News Feed page. This is because the social networking service uses your smartphone’s location to suggest nearby Facebook users.

So, how does this work? Basically, this occurs when two users are at the same place and at the same time, who use their smartphones either to just scroll through what their friends might have shared on the website or check-in to the place.

While this feature intrudes your privacy, it is easy to disable the functionality by avoiding Facebook to access your smartphone’s location.

Here’s how you can disable the feature on both Android and iOS smartphones:

Android

Based on the Android version, the process of stopping Facebook from accessing the smartphone’s location varies for Android users. For those using Android Marshmallow, just go to Settings > Apps > Facebook > Permissions > Location > Off. This will stop Facebook from accessing your smartphone’s location.

For users, who are using an older version of Android, the only solution is to access Facebook from the Chrome browser and not the official app.

iOS

In order to stop Facebook from accessing your location, iOS simply have to go to Settings > Privacy > Location Services > Facebook. Select ‘Never’ from the options offered. And, you are done. You will now no longer get those irritating suggested friend requests.

Source: TOI