Facebook Friends list randomly getting bigger?

[kyle]

about 3 weeks ago, i had 194 friends or so. A few days ago, I had around 197 friends. Today, I have 204 friends. I have not accepted or even recieved any new friend requests. Can anyone explain this?

I am having these wild theories of Big Brother or scummy companies/people spying on me by somehow attaching themselves to my friends list. However, I am not as unobservant as one may think (just because I'm a college kid doesn't mean I have no idea what is going on around me haha), and I try to keep track of random things like license plate #'s and random mannerisms of the people I am around.

I'm a little paranoid like that, but then again one day it may come in handy, right? Haha anyways, anyone know why it might be increasing? Does it have anything to do with Groups or Lists that you can join/make?
Like I said, WILD theories haha
I am seeing this same question pop up a lot just recently (within the past hour) all over Yahoo Answers. I would really like to know what is causing this and what type of accounts are affected (only private friends only accounts or are public accounts affected too?)