A friend of mine had a big shock recently when she logged into Facebook. On the right side of her wall, in the section labled "People you may know" was a picture of her ex-husband with her minor-aged grandson. The ex had set up an account with a fictitious name because Facebook had previously banned him for posting pronography.
In a fit of frustration, my friend quickly posted a tirade of venom on her wall to which her ex immediately attempted to respond by text and telephone. Not accepting his calls, he left voicemail messages trying to explain the name change was completely harmless.
This woman felt completely violated that this man was able to read everything she shared on Facebook. To complicate the matter, the grandson is not related to him. The picture was taken at a public event where they all happened to be in attendance.
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I advised this friend to make her profile settings private to block the cyber-eavesdropping of this man and others, but what do you suggest she do about the bigger issues of a man using a false identity that included a picture of her grandson? Unfortunately she didn't note the new name before she changed her profile settings.
SSF Readers: Please share your advice. How would you handle a situation like this? We look forward to reading your comments.
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Hmmm.. that's a tricky one. I think first of all, I would probably alert the parents of this child that there was a photo of the boy floating around on Facebook. BUT without a name with which to attach it, that makes things a lot tougher.
ReplyDeleteAs for the man using the false identity, my thought is that IF the fake name had been provided to Facebook alerting them that the man had been previously banned, they may do absolutely nothing. My guess is that people make false names up all of the time. It might be part of the territory!
I think you are right Diane, there are probably many false identities on Facebook. Restricting privacy settings to allowing information to be seen only by 'friends' offers a decent, but not foolproof, layer of security. The way I see it, this guy has to be listed one or more times on mutual friend's lists with his ex-wife--or why would FB have suggested him to start with. Perhaps she needs to find out who the common link is to at least find out what name he's using. I would guess she could then notify FB and request her grandson's picture be removed. It's a difficult situation.
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