How to Manage Contact Requests on Stitch

Why contact requests exist

Stitch uses a contact-request system rather than letting anyone message you the moment they find your username — someone has to send a request, and you have to accept it, before you become contacts. This matters because your contact list is also the basis for a lot of what other people can see about you and where you show up (like which group chats can add you), so the request step is a real checkpoint, not a formality.

Where requests come from

A contact request can arrive because someone found your username, scanned your QR code, or was given your profile link. In every case, finding your profile and sending a request are two different steps from actually becoming contacts — nothing happens automatically just because someone located your profile.

Deciding whether to accept

• Do you recognize the name, username, or photo? If nothing about the request looks familiar, that alone is a reasonable reason to decline.
• Does the request come with an unsolicited message that already feels like a pitch, a scam pattern, or an unusually fast financial or romantic angle? Decline rather than engage.
• Is this someone you met in a context where an unfamiliar name is expected (an event, a mutual group, a professional introduction)? That context matters more than the name alone.
• When in doubt, it costs nothing to decline — a declined request does not notify the sender that they were specifically rejected, and they are free to try again later if it was a genuine mistake on their end.

Accepting or declining

1. Open Contacts and find the Requests section.
2. Review each pending request — accept the ones you recognize and want to connect with.
3. Decline anything you do not recognize or are not comfortable accepting; this quietly dismisses the request without notifying the sender that they were rejected.

Controlling who can find you at all

Beyond deciding what to do with requests as they arrive, you also have some control over how easy you are to find in the first place — your profile photo and last-seen visibility settings determine how much a stranger can see even before you accept them as a contact, so tightening those (My Contacts or Nobody) reduces what an unknown requester sees while their request is still pending.

If accepting was a mistake

If you accept a request and later regret it — the person turns out to be unwanted, or their behavior after being accepted is a problem — you are not stuck. You can remove them as a contact, block them outright if they are actively bothering you, or report them if their behavior violates the Community Guidelines. See our guides on reporting or blocking users and avoiding scam messages for the full detail on each of those options.

Requests that arrive with an opening message

Some requests come with a short message attached, others do not. A message can genuinely help you decide — "we met at the conference on Tuesday" gives you real context — but it can also be exactly how a scam or spam request tries to look legitimate before you have had a chance to be skeptical. Treat an attached message as one input, not a reason to lower your guard; the same red flags that apply to any message (urgency, financial asks, romantic interest from a stranger) apply just as much to a contact request's opening line as they do to a message from someone you have already accepted.

What being contacts actually changes

It helps to be concrete about what accepting a request unlocks, since it is easy to either overestimate or underestimate it. Once accepted, a contact can message you directly, see whatever your privacy settings allow (photo, last-seen, birthday, depending on how you have those configured), and can be added to group chats with you more easily. It does not give them access to your other contacts, your other conversations, or any account-level control — the relationship is scoped to what a normal chat contact can see and do, nothing more.

A steady approach to requests

• Check requests periodically rather than letting a large backlog build up — a long list makes it easier to accept something on autopilot without really looking at it.
• Recognize a name is a good sign, but not a guarantee — familiar-sounding names can still be impersonation attempts, especially if the rest of the profile looks sparse or new.
• Decline liberally. A declined request costs the sender nothing they will be told about, and it costs you nothing either.
• Tighten your photo and last-seen visibility if you are getting requests from people you cannot place at all, since it usually means your profile is more discoverable than you intended.