Latest Facebook App For Android Has The Shocking Habit of Sending Notifications Even When Signed Out

Facebook, arguably the world’s most popular social media network, is never not in the news. You may love it, you may hate it, but you certainly cannot ignore Facebook, and everything it does. Unless you live under a rock. And if you use an Android phone, no matter how hard you try, you certainly cannot ignore Facebook.

We have noticed the Facebook app on Android behave rather strangely, ever since we updated it to the latest version from the Google Play Store. And it is quite shocking. Even though we are not signed in on the Facebook app at the moment, we are still receiving notifications that a friend has commented on a post and that there may be a new friend suggestion waiting for us. All these ‘teaser’ sort of messages are coming though, even when the account is not logged in on the app at the time these notifications landed on our phone.

That said, these are not all the notifications that landed in this time, which logging in to Facebook via the desktop testified to. Which makes these selective notifications rather strange to begin with. Incidentally, this has happened twice in the past 24 hours, which is also strange for someone who has not been very active on Facebook over the past few days. It is prudent to clarify at this point that we have never noticed similar eccentric behavior from the Facebook app ever before.

The Facebook app for Android is currently on version 220.0.0.46.112 and was last updated on 06-May-2019. This is an app that has more than 1,00,00,00,000 downloads. The update brings with it a new lighter blue icon on Android and iOS—though the icon on the Google Play Store listing page still reflects the older icon.

It is not exactly clear if this is the final FB5 update that Mark Zuckerberg teased at the beginning of the month. When logged in, we still did not see the new interface. At the F8 conference earlier this month, Facebook had detailed the next big updates for the social network. Called the FB5, the new app ditches the blue colour, relegates the News Feed and is redirecting the focus on Groups. There will be an overhauled Groups tab that will show you a feed of all the activity from the groups that you are a part of. While Facebook may have more than a billion users globally, the company believes that there are about 400 million users who are a part of groups they find relevant, and that is the demographic they want to pursue more intently now. The redesigned Facebook app will also show Group suggestions based on Facebook’s virtual personality sketch of you and more content from Groups will show on your standard News Feed as well. Facebook is also introducing new features to certain categories of groups. Health Support groups will now allow members can post questions and share information without their name appearing with the post. In Job groups, there will be a new template for employers to post new openings, and job seekers will be able to message the employer who shared the opening and apply directly for the job through Facebook. The Gaming groups will get a new chat feature.

At the time, Facebook had confirmed that the version is now rolling out for users, though not everyone will see it at the same time. Interesting enough to note that the Facebook app for the Apple iOS platform was also updated to version 220.0 four days ago and has not exhibited these scary notification tendencies thus far on the iPhone.

We do hope this is not standard behavior for the Android app and hopefully this bug would be fixed soon enough.