🔊 Play

I just got a comment on 1 of the posts I shared from this site to Facebook.
“Hello
?
?
, I hope you don’t get this comment the wrong way, I must say your posts are lovely and interesting, unfortunately, we are not friends here on Facebook, I tried several times sending you a friend request but it was canceled if you don’t mind kindly click on my profile and send me a friend request.”

So just for the halibut, I clicked on his profile. First thing that jumps out at me is his tagline:
PROCTECTING THE FLAG!
But he claims to have graduated from West Point? Somehow I think not. Probably the only truthful statement in that profile is that he lives in Damascus, Syria. And I’m even suspicious of that.

I get so many friend requests I ignore that I don’t know if he’s ever really sent me one or not. But if so, it will be cancelled, just like those before it. And if not, then it’ll be cancelled anyway.

Maybe one of these days I’ll accept 1 of these sorts of request just to see what they try to do. I worry that FB doesn’t give me enough granularity in terms of what he’d be able to see if I accepted such a request, ie, could he see my family’s posts, etc, so I probably actually won’t string any of these folks along like that, but it’s tempting. It might be fun scamming the scammers.

Having a lot of friends/followers on social media has become somewhat of a status symbol these days. It can feel flattering when someone you don’t know says they’ve read your content and found it interesting. Most of these requests, however, are really generic, in that they don’t contain specifics about what content they’ve read or what they found interesting about it.

Still, what can be the harm of granting a friend request?

If the request is to see your private page, then it can allow people you don’t know to see what your friends and family are up to. That’s not a good idea, as they could get information that could ultimately be used against you. It might also introduce an opening to perpetrate a romance scam.

Frankly, the best thing to do in these cases is just say “no” and ignore the request. You may have fewer followers as a result, but you may also, perhaps unknowingly, protect yourself from a scammer.