Okay Geek Farm
Interview - Being stalked on Facebook and why Common sense wins
Brandon Davenport
I was at my desk in class, working on our school website when I saw one of my friends talking to the teacher, and flipping through pieces of paper. It didn’t seem out of place, but what was worrying me was the fact they had a worried look on their faces — their eyes glued to the paper. They were really quiet, and when my friend came and sat down next to me, and turned on his computer I asked, what was that?
He told me, “I have a stalker” and I immediately chuckled, figuring someone from Xbox live was trolling him but I soon saw that he had a straight face, and I became silent. He then went on to explain a 52 year old man had been messaging him on Facebook, asking to become friends — and at that point I was a little un-comfortable.
He went on to explain he had phoned the police the night before and since then the messages had stopped, but when he showed me the paper he had shown to our teacher, I was shocked. Most of the messages were fairly un-suspicious, but one of them was completely disturbing — and furthermore, the stalker lived only a few blocks from my friends house.
I immediately opened up Text Edit and asked if I could interview him for T3ch H3lp, and he agreed, after a little explanation on my part. As we started the interview I asked him increasingly revealing questions, and he gave me increasingly shorter answers. The part that irked me the most was the fact that he had managed his privacy settings properly — marking his personal info, photos and status updates as private — but what if he had not? What if he left his account wide open, like everyone else I know? My friend is 17 years old.
Interview with the Teen who got Stalked on Facebook
How did this all start? — “He watches a local community TV program which I host. He then looked my name up on Facebook and sent me a message, it was a simple message. My privacy settings were set so people could search me, and only friends could see my photos, phone, address and stuff like that. My profile picture was a promotion for a night-club I was working at.”
He said he wanted to add you to his friends, did you? — “No, and I didn’t respond to the message either. After 2 days he sent me a second message asking if I was the guy who hosted the TV show. I did not respond to that message either, but I wasn’t worried. After I had seen the message, I changed my profile picture to an actual photo of me, un-bothered about this guy contacting me. I wasn’t concernd about anything, I just thought it was some guy who liked the show.”
After you changed your profile pic, he sent you another message? — “[Nods head].” What was the title? “It was creepy… the title was ‘You are so sweet…’ “
Contents of the Message
Note: Due to the disturbing content of the message that was received, we have provided a download of the uncensored message in plain text format so if you don’t want to see it, you don’t have to. We really don’t want to offend anyone so only download this if you would not take personal offence to the messages content.
Download - The message as a “.txt” plain text file
So after you read that message, what did you think? — “I thought it was creepy for a 52 year old to be creeping on a 17 year old. I called the police right away.”
What did the police say? — “They took down his info, told me to block him on Facebook and that’s about it. They also said always be with a friend.”
Does this guy live close to you? — “Basically. He lives downtown and I live pretty close.”
Does it bother you that he lives really close to you? — “Nope.”
Does this change the way you feel about Facebook? — “No.”
Does he have a history of doing this? — “No. I’m pretty sure.”
Any follow up from the police? — “Yeah, they left a message on his cellphone, but I haven’t heard from the stalker since.”
So, most people on Facebook have their profiles wide open. What if you hadn’t changed your privacy settings? — “He would know more about me. My cellphone, address everything.”
So after having this happen, does this make you a little less comfortable about being “out there” online and on TV? — “A bit… uhh, no no, not at all [walks out to answer phone].”
The Moral of the story
In this situation, there were many points of failure — the fact that my friend was hosting a local TV program and that he was on Facebook. Though most of this was due to the fact that he was hosting the TV show, we have to remember that when you are on Facebook you open up yourself to everyone and everything. Knowing that the majority of my friends don’t bother with privacy settings really concerns me — mostly because their contact and location information is wide open.
If my friend were not to have changed his privacy settings, and managed his profile properly — this creep would have easily seen his home address, phone number, cell number and age — among other things. What I (and every other geek) recommend is that you always keep on top of privacy settings, and manage your information within Facebook — because if you don’t, this creep wouldn’t need to request a friend invite, he would just look up where you live on your profile, and pop in for a cup of coffee…
