There are things that you never hope will happen, but last week one of these things happened. Someone of our group was targeted and photo’s of her Facebook Timeline were copied into a fake account. For what reason? I don’t know and basically I don’t care. The account is not active no more and that is the only thing that counts.
To who of the ladies in our group this happened is not important. She is already shocked enough about this. Basically, we all are. Emotions within our group go from unbelief to anger.
How could this happen as all the photo’s were “friends only”?
First, what could be that one the “friends” was not as trustworthy as was assumed.
Or one of the friends doesn’t have the security on Facebook as tight as it should be and specially for Facebook goes the “as strong as the weakest link”-principle.
On request I checked, together with the people in our group, all the Facebook configurations and changed it where needed. Specially the privacy settings got a close look.
The result was that friend lists got cleaned up to people who one can trust. Photo’s got cleaned up, many photo’s were removed from Facebook.
As last all the profile pictures of the ladies in the group were changed into a photo or picture of something else.
Miranda was the only exception in this as her profile picture is the only photo of herself on Facebook. She has only her Facebook account to see what the others of our group post and to react on that.
For the same reason I have placed our weblog in “maintenance mode”.
For the members of the group who had there a photo of themselves as avatar-picture, I replaced those with a picture of their zodiac sign (not that anyone of us believes in astrology or anything alike, but it is a bit of fun this way).
With the help of the others, we scanned through the content of the weblog (thank you for that). Although at times there is written about private subjects, there were only a few articles that we declared “private” (so only certain registered members can read them).
With knowing this I will set our weblog to “public” again.
Within the group we will discus if we can do anything more to prevent things like this.
I am really considering to shut down my Facebook account. For now I do not feel safe there anymore.
Dear Marissa, I so feel for you. Social media can be a bastard. But you know you have very dear friends around you, whom know you for real and care for you. So screw anything or anyone else! They are big time loosers. Remain proud of yourself, by default you have that right! And only accept friends in social media whom you know for real (in daily life). You’ll be fine girl – all will be OK.
Ohw sorry, the above comment was from me (Kris).
BTW. It’s FRIDAY THE 13th!! YEAH!!! Freak out! I LOVE FRIDAY the 13th!!
Listen to the Lady, Marissa. You can always call back on us, you know that.
And yes, it is Friday, even Friday the 13th! After work you come here to us. If possible Marion and I will pick you up in Apeldoorn or Amsersfoort :-)
Thank you for your kind words, Kris.
I was about to cancel my Facebook account, but Rob advised not to do that. I may regret it later on, so for now I just stay away there for a while. I already cleaned up my friend list.
And you are right, I should be happy with the friends I have around me.