Jody Raines

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Online Safety: When To Beware The Invitation To Connect

Social Media SafetyRecently I received an invitation to connect to someone on Facebook.  In and of itself, this is not an unusual occurance.  Since I co-host several podcasts, and am active on Social Media, there are often people asking to be ‘friends’ who I don’t know personally, but this situation had my spidey senses tingling.

When it comes to social media safety, it helps to be cautious and look for the red flags.

There are some red flags that I noticed:

  1. The person’s name was a “gag name”.  Now this can happen, and may not be a total red flag, but if you receive a request from Seymore Bunns, or Anita Break you should most likely delve further into whether you truly want to accept this person among your connections.   In this case, the person’s name was a page turner of sorts.
  2. The profile picture and background picture are not of the person.   Again, this may not be a true indicator that the person does not exist or is not real, however, if someone is trying to be overly clever and they faked the profile, then it’s another way to detect a false profile.
  3. The profile is relatively new.   If someone has a profile that was recently created and they have a ton of ‘friends’ then be cautious if you do not recognize the name.

All three of these indicators were in place for this particular friend request, but… there was more…..

  1. All posts are memes and generic.  If there is no personal content, that’s very odd.   Every now and then, most people will post a picture of something that they are doing, or something they are eating or even a picture of their dog.  If the only posts are third party shares, that’s another suspicious characteristic.
  2. The friends that you are also connected to are primarily from similar circles.  If you notice that the unknown person who wants to friend you is connected to several people from that same circle, you should be suspicious.   Ask your friends whether htey really know the person,or whether they friended them because others were connected.  If you have friends who are numbers people and really don’t care who they accept, then it’s important to discount their response to your inquiry.
  3. Where it starts getting creepy is when the friend requester has many of your connections, but they are connected in ways that does not make sense.  For example, with this request, not only were they connected to a ton of people that I network with locally, they also were somehow connected to people that I went to High School with, and who do not live in the area.  The person also had connected to a guy I dated who now lives in another state.  The liklihood of someone knowing this same circle of people from very different points of my sphere is more like flashing beacons than red flags.   Just too much of a coincidence.

How do you handle the situation?  I reached out to a few of my friends who were connected and asked whether they knew this perons or had met the person in real life.  No one actually remembers meeting her.   I think it’s safe to say that in this instance, it’s a nefarious purpose and therefore, I will not friend the person.

You may ask what difference this makes, and I will share with you a situation in my town where someone who had been allowed to connect started stalking and victimising females.   None of the young ladies who were victims actually knew the stalker, but had accepted the person because he was a friend of their friends.

Be wary.  Be careful.  And do not post where you are going to be or what you are not going to be home. Don’t indiscriminantly friend people without knowing who they are or investigating why they wish to friend you.   Sure, it may turn out to be fine, but an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

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How To Identify A Social Media Friend or Stalker?

Jody RainesThere seems to be a strange phenomena that is taking place and it’s a “new” way of connecting that is difficult to classify. The line between a new friend and a overly curious acquaintance has created a curious change in the way we protect or fail to protect our privacy.

The Facebook post that becomes a chat, for example, is an introduction of sorts. It’s a way that various people who may otherwise never connect, wind up discussion a topic with each other.

A few weeks ago, I was chatting about the season finale of The Walking Dead with several of my friends. As you can imagine, it was a lively post because as things happened, someone would make a comment and then others would chime in.  All was cool, until a male friend made a comment about one of my female friend’s pets.  They did not know each other, they live in different states, and their only connection to each other was through my association with both of them.   The reason this was odd – was because the woman did not have a picture of her pet on her profile photo, so my conjecture is that my male friend went to her profile page to “check her out”.

I’ve noticed several connections made this way, and most of them are harmless.   For example, a male friend of mine who is married is now connected to a female friend who has a life partner.  Although they are dichotomous extremes in a political sense, ironically their sense of humor is shared, and therefore, they connected.   I think that is kind of cool because under any other circumstance, these two people would never have ‘met’.

Another association is with a friend of mine who recently got a Siberian Husky puppy.  Just so happens another friend of mine breeds and shows Huskies.  By bringing the first person’s attention to the adorable videos of irresistable baby Huskies, he wound up connecting with my friend the breeder.  Of course this ‘friendship’ now has a life of it’s own.

Every now and then, I have a friend request from someone I don’t know.   I typically check to see how we are connected – what mutual friends we have.  In most instances, I will send off a quick note to the mutual connection to ask how they know the person and whether the individual is legitimate.   Periodically, I find that my friends have not been diligent in evaluating whether the profile is genuine.  I’ve seen several situation s where I’ve been asked to connect with someone I thought I was already connected to, only to learn that their profile picture had been used to make a ‘fake’ account that was now harvesting their friends.  A quick call to the original person may tip them off to potential fraud.

My advice is as follows:

1. Don’t post anything that is too personal or that you don’t want the world to know. Regardless of privacy settings the first rule is that NOTHING is private.

2. Periodically check your friends to determine if there are duplicates.  If you find the dupe, a little bit of research may help a friend who may be unaware that their profile was duplicated or compromised.

3. Don’t open attachments that you are not sure of.  I get these emails almost every day – an email that appears to come from a Facebook friend’s name, but it only has a link to a masked url.   These can contain trojans or viruses, so you should be absolutely cautious before clicking on them.   In fact, if you look at the name and then click on the name to see the email address it actually came from, you may be surprised it is also masked.  In other words, it’s an email from an unknown person that appears to be coming from someone you know.

4. If someone you recently connected with starts commenting on old pictures, it can be disconcerting.  Even more upsetting is they start posting pictures of you!  I had a situation recently where an individual started posting pictures of people who had deceased during the year and tagging the family indicating that they hadn’t forgotten.  In this instance, I think it was supposed to be a caring gesture, but it came across as very unsettling.

5. Be suspicious.  I know, it sounds awful, but in this day and age where profiles can be created and deleted in the blink of an eye, there are too many charlatans intent on obtaining personal information.  A healthy skepticism can save a lot of future grief.

What strange connections have you encountered?  Have you been friend requested by a clone of a friend and you caught it?  I’m curious what you are seeing, and if you have additional thoughts with regard to staying safe on social media sites.

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