Do You Know Your Friends?

Well, of course you do.  Are you sure?  Right, yeah, hmm...

I've had several friends, whom I know personally, have had their Facebook identity cloned recently.  Same profile picture, too. This means that I received an invitation to accept them as a friend again.  I remember that as soon as I received the first clone request, several years ago, it just didn't feel right to me.  So I have never accepted a second friend request without first reaching out to the friend via messaging, email, or even a phone call to verify the request.  Why?  Well, it just didn't feel right.  It always gives me the heebie-jeebies, a creepy, gut feeling.

Turns out that is a very good thing.  Accepting a cloned request could mean allowing a hacker to access your account and, by extension, your friends’ accounts.  You don't want to feel responsible for that now, do you?  My recently cloned friend had 8 duplicate friends.  Uh-huh, we don't know many people who are so technologically challenged that they can't figure out how to get into their original accounts, not in today's world.

With that in mind, here are a few tips I would like to share:

• Look for mutual friends when you receive any request. 

• If you know this friend and have common friends already, note how many mutual friends you share.  If there are only a few, and you've known this person for a long time, the chances are that you probably have many more friends in common.

• Don't accept yet.  Check your friends list to see if you're already friends.  If you're already friends, DON'T accept this request.

  • Delete the request and report it as spam or as a fake account.  The powers that be at FB will take care of it.  Do this from a desk or laptop computer; it's easier.  Trust me.

  • Check your true friends’ timeline to see if they've noticed they've been "hacked".  If not, message them and let them know.  Encourage them to change their password and to check their friend lists for duplicate friends (more on this below).

  • DON'T message this second request either.  These people are good at what they do.  You may think you're having a conversation with your friend - seriously - until they tell you they need thousands of dollars because they're stuck in a third-world country, have had bad luck recently, or worse.

• Be sure to let your common friends who have the cloned account know that they may have friended a cloned account, so they can check their list and delete it too.

• Periodically go through your friends list.  Look for duplicate names.

• If you find a duplicate name, check the mutual friends you have in common again.

• How long have they been active?

• Personally, I would most likely delete both unless I could determine without a doubt that one is real. That should be easy enough, unless the cloned account has been established for quite some time, which is usually a big giveaway.

As a Virtual Assistant, this is something I would do for a client, and I would do it while using my favorite essential oil, Balance (Grounding Blend), in the diffuser.  I want to be a responsible social connection, and I hope these tips will serve you.  The world is scary enough at times, and Facebook or any social media outlet should not be.

Until next time, be well naturally.