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How do I unfriend someone who sends me annoying Facebook events?

I have a ton of friends on Facebook, and it's generally pretty cool, but there are two or three people who keep inviting me to their MLM marketing events and I not only don't want to go, I don't want to see their invitations any more, nor any other communications from them. I can't "hide" them as I do with status updates, so what's my option?


Dave's Answer:

I too have seen the danger in connecting with friends of friends and with other people who find you through the 'friend finder' feature or perhaps bump into you a conference or class. Most of the time they're reasonably interesting and sometimes it can help nurture a true friendship, but once in a blue moon someone gets through and becomes your friend with the sole purpose of marketing to you. Ugh.

I've recently had this happen with my Facebook account and though I generally prefer people who aren't my friends connect with me through the Ask Dave Taylor fan club (you're a member, right?) sometimes I connect with them from my personal account.

Which is the only explanation I had when I noticed that the third event invitation I'd received from this one chap was for how to make money with online gambling. Now I realize that this was someone who I connected with on the strength of mutual friends, but didn't actually know, but still, wayyyy off target:

facebook unfriend annoying event creator 1

The two choices here are "Confirm" or "Ignore", but there's no "Help! Get Me Off This Guy's Mailing List!" button, so here's what I did: I Cmd-clicked on his name, which opened up a new tab in my browser and loaded up his profile.

Then I clicked on "Ignore" to mark this particular event:

facebook unfriend annoying event creator 2

Meanwhile, though, in the other tab, I had his entire Facebook profile loaded up:

facebook unfriend annoying event creator 3

Since there is no easy way to create a filter that rejects event invitations from certain friends automatically, I decided that since I wasn't sure who this chap was anyway, I'd just unfriend him on Facebook instead.

Once you're viewing the other person's profile, you need to scroll down and look for the following in the lower left side:

facebook unfriend annoying event creator 4

As the highlight shows, you want to select "Remove from Friends" to zap them. Confirm?

facebook unfriend annoying event creator 5

Confirmed! You're no longer connected to them via the Facebook system. Problem solved.


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Categorized: Facebook Help   (Article 9479, Written by )
Tagged: facebook, facebook friends, facebook spam, unfriending
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Reader Comments To Date: 2

Ken B said, on June 29, 2010 10:31 AM:

It probably wasn't intentional, but you need to fuzz out names better. It only took me about 30 seconds to find your "friend" from Perth, Western Australia. :-)

Dave Taylor said, on June 29, 2010 3:23 PM:

:-)

Starbucks coffee cup I do have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but first I'd like to say thank you, Dave, for all your helpful information by buying you a cup of coffee!

I do have a comment, now that you mention it!











I will never send you any unsolicited email. Ever.






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