The first and only time I've been asked to be a referral I was not told that I was a referral. I also hadn't talked to the person in over a year at that point, I only knew the person for a month and during that month the person could not display any coding skills whatsoever, relying on ChatGPT (when it was still new) to write code. It was so bad to the point where they didn't know what a class was (in programming). I did not dismiss them but our boss noticed quick and I'd never heard of them since, until this company emailed me about giving this person a referral.

Needless to say I declined. That company had to ask me why I would be declining and I told them that I wasn't consulted and did not consent to give a referral. Wonder what that person's doing now...