WTF is happening to my cell phone?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’m putting this in IMHO because I don’t know if there’s a factual answer to the question.

I have an Android phone, use Chrome as the browser, and have all the regular upgrades and security features. For the last week or so I have been receiving multiple messages on Chrome suggesting I connect with so-and-so on Facebook. Some of the suggestions are already FB friends, some are friends of friends, and a lot of them are complete strangers.

Here’s the thing, these “suggestions” are coming as Chrome alerts, not as suggestions from Facebook. When I look at FB, none of those suggestions are there.

Also, I use Chrome as my browser on my desktop computer, and I don’t have this problem with it.

Is someone trying to hack my phone number? How does that work? Is there any way to stop this?

2

Not any kind of expert, but: i have had and still have similar alerts from an app on my phone, I can’t figure out which one, that suggest various games and things. If you go in Settings, Apps and look for the app, you can usually disable notifications.

If it were me, I wouldn’t put any more sinister meaning to it other than someone trying to make money by “selling” you something, even if it’s only a facebook link. Everything online is monetized somehow, even facebook links, or maybe especially facebook links.

3

Not sure what’s causing this, but unless you use Chrome notifications for some other purpose, recommend disabling all notifications from that app.

4

This page may help, see the “Allow or block notifications from some sites” section: Use notifications to get alerts - Android - Google Chrome Help

5

Thanks. I checked the notifications panel and the site was listed as m.facebook.com, not facebook.com. I turned it off, so let’s see what happens.

6

I haven’t used it in years but m.facebook.com is just a Facebook subdomain for mobile displays; it’s not fraudulent – so you got that going for you.

7

Websites can send notifications through the webbrowser. Do you log in to facebook in your browser, or have you done so in the past? You might have told chrome facebook, as a webpage, can send you notifications.

8

But the real issue is, why do I only get these notifications on my phone, and not on my desktop? I spend a lot of time on my desktop, and my phone will pop with friend suggestions (and it’s always friend suggestions that trigger the notification, not “so and so replied to your post”) that don’t show up on my desktop page.

9

Because allowing notifications from the browser is set per device rather than for chrome universally?

10

I started getting the same kind of messages, and I don’t use Facebook on the my phone either, (also Android). I assume they’ve just started a new notification system–it might have been triggered by link I clicked which was a Facebook page.

11

I don’t know about mobile browsers, but, on Desktop browsers, they directly ask you if you want to allow notifications. You probably say “No” or have disabled the option entirely in the settings.

Personally, I would expect the same on mobile browsers, but I also can’t remember ever being prompted. Then again, I may just not visit the sites where it would happen.

Are you sure you never agreed to allow m.facebook.com to send notifications?

12

I have all FB notifications disabled on my phone. I’ll check them manually on my own time, thank you.