Why am I seeing Facebook statuses of people I don't know in my news feed?

I’ve noticed this recently, too. To make it so you don’t see other people’s stuff:

You hover over your friend’s name, then over “friends”, then click on “settings” and uncheck “comments and likes”.

I’m pretty sure you’d have to ask everyone on your friends list to deselect “likes and comments” for your account, to make it so nobody you don’t know sees your statuses. And there’s no guarantee all of them will do it, or even see your request. Maybe strict privacy settings will do the job? I’m not entirely certain.

I was afraid of this. We have a mutual friend that asked everyone to deselect “likes and comments” and I almost didn’t do it, but then I changed my mind and took the time to do it. I’d be lucky to have 5 people out of the 249 friends I have to do this for me. Bummer.

This is relevant. You do not have to ask your friends to do anything. You can take care of it in your own settings on FB. I don’t exactly know the steps to take, but I know it can be done.

Edit to add: I may be wrong. I also see it when a friend likes a different person’s status. I simply ignore it and scroll on.

When you post something there is a faint drop down list where you can make that post “friends only” or “public.”

Change your privacy setting to friends only.

I have strict privacy controls on my posts, so maybe my posts aren’t showing up on the news feeds of friends of friends? That’s good to know.

But this would explain why I have a bunch of strange people littering up my news feed. Is it because their posts are set to public?

Yes.