Monday, June 6, 2016

What's up with this, Facebook?

Annamaria on Monday

There may be the beginnings of a thriller plot in something that has been happening to me.  The movie or the book might be called The Facebook Conspiracy.


Almost all writers I know use Facebook to promote their work.  Our publishers urge us to do this so we can interact with our readers and use the connections to promote each new book as it comes along.  With each of my books, my publisher sent me a questionnaire that asked, among other things, how many friends Annamaria Alfieri had on Facebook.


The number went up every year.  These days, I get new friend requests just about every day.  I am happy to connect with these new people, so for a long while I automatically accepted any friend request I received.

That is until about eighteen months ago, when something weird started happening.  I started to get friend requests from men, who--the instant I accepted them--private messaged me to tell me how beautiful I am and how desperate they were to get to know me better.


I found this creepy in the extreme.  There are hundreds of millions of women more attractive than I on Facebook.  On top of which my Facebook page clearly states that I am married.  These would-be friends would have had no way of knowing that, in reality, I no longer have a husband.  What did they hope to achieve by flattering me in such a way?  I could not imagine it was anything nice.  After a couple of these experiences, I began examining the profiles of people before I accepted their offer of friendship.  I began to suspect that some of the people approaching me were using fake identities. Let me show you the evidence:

Profile of the impersonator:  Male, divorced/widowed, often military, lives in another state/country/continent, well-educated, has very few or no other friends on Facebook, displays few pictures of himself--almost all in a professional capacity, and quite a few of them have the same woman (Victory Crane) as a friend.  I am not accusing her of anything.  She may be just another target.

Here are screen shots of such offers of friendship that I received between May 24 and May 26 this year:











Yes, it is typical for me to receive five of these in a three-day period, which is one of the reasons I am talking about it.  It really creeps me out.  So much so that I reported the activity to Facebook.  The answer came back that the people in question were legitimate subscribers.  No help from that quarter.

I must say, though, creepy as I find all this, I did get one offer that made me laugh out loud.  Here it is:


Really?  I am supposed to believe that this guy is the architect of that building?   HAHAHA! 



If I wrote contemporary thrillers, I would write one with the following plot:  Woman in her sixties finds herself living alone for the first time in her life.  Her husband's tragic illness has destroyed the happy life she had.  For a living, she writes code for a voice-over-internet provider and works from home.  She is lonely and could be vulnerable to people who are trying to impose on her.  Out of the blue, she begins to receive offers like the ones above.  At first, she accepts offers of Facebook friendship from attractive men who live far away, thinking that a little minor-league internet flirting couldn't hurt.  She does that with a few of these men.  But then she begins to suspect that they are out to hurt her in some way.  When she tries to find out if her suspicions are correct, she gets no help from Facebook.  So she uses her computer skills to try to dig into what is behind all this.  At first what she finds leads her to believe that there are more than three people behind the false faces on her computer screen.  She suspects a financial scam of some sort, because money does come up in the posts from them on her Facebook page.  Eventually, she uncovers a shadow world, playing the background of Facebook, where a ring of underworld international arms dealers use unsuspecting women's Facebook pages to pass coded messages to one another.  One of the men who has friended her and watches her Facebook page turns out to be a French BRGE spy (Brigade de renseignement et de guerre électronique).  He eventually he sees that she has misunderstood the danger.  When she decides to trap the miscreants, he must interfere to save her.

19 comments:

  1. Oh my gosh, you HAVE to read this article from Sunday's New York Times: Everybody Loves a Hero, Especially Facebook Fraudsters

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    1. Read it, Sue. Now I know I am not paranoid!! Everybody, read the article. It's short and bitter!

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  2. The same sort of thing haunts male Face Book members. Sis. Attractive women often seek to friend me--and contrary to contemporary thought on the subject--I'm very cautious about friending those I don't know or who come with less than a slew of mutual friends. I say that because invariably a "confirm" leads to a "Hi, how are you" personal message or other such come-on conversation.

    I consider Facebook the same as a public bar--or restroom--you must be wary of those with whom you strike up a conversation.

    I should add that I do not separate my private from my author site as I believe everything you put up on FaceBook could some day come back to haunt you...and that is also why I try to keep my personal information as inaccurate as possible. Just ask stalker EvKa.

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    1. Bro, you have infinitely more experience hanging out in bars than I. I won't say a word about public bathrooms.

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  3. Funny thing is, Annamaria, I don't get these type of Friend requests.

    I think maybe they're all scared of me ...

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    1. Zoe, I need you to help mw get in touch with my dangerous side. As you can see, I am not overly trusting. But I think I do need to fly the "Don't tread on me" flag quite a bit higher.

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    2. Attitude Adjustment in Andalusia? :)

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  4. You've got a great plot there for a book, I want to reserve a copy now. AND for the record, truth is stranger than fiction. Another one to watch out for in the world of 'blogosphere' writers are other 'bloggers' who list themselves as 'friend of other blogger you know' and it turns out they are also scammers. It is good to be cautious of those you friend no matter how much editors like those social media numbers.

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    1. J&J, We get a great number of spammers on this blog. One commented on this post almost the second it went up. Most of them come on older posts and MANY are for "escort services" in Mumbai. What could that robot be thinking? But then again I often ask myself that about Donald Trump, and look where that kind of thinking got him.

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    2. They no doubt result from a certain "friend" of MIE's propensity for hanging tear-away sheets containing a link to MIE in public bathrooms under a scribbled, "EvKa was here."

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    3. Maybe Donald Trump doesn't exist? Maybe he's just a scam on Facebook to try to make the US give him the country.

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    4. Yes, Michael. You are probably right. And look at the millions of gullible people who are ready to do that. My passport of in order.

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  5. The one I seem to keep getting hit by is the people who post pictures of the same creepy looking old dude who seems to have no skills taking a selfie (he never gets more than half his face in the frame), always with the same cute chick in the background in various provocative poses. I've complained over and over, but they continue to refuse to give me contact information for the cute chick.

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    1. This is indeed upsetting, EvKa. Give me a few minutes. I will think of ploy to lure him into a public bathroom so you can have a shot of introducing yourself to that beautiful lady.

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  6. (Laurence here) I've never received a "purple" request, but I learned the hard way that "friending" unknown people is not a good idea. On one side of my quirky, mixed family, some commemorate the Nakba as if it happened yesterday, while others are still fighting the '67 war. A cousin made a point of tagging me in a very public post where she denounced and then de-friended me. Iver the next few weeks I received a spate of requests, and not wanting to appear rude or stuck-up, I accepted them. BIG MISTAKE. Someone even posted a video where he recited the prayers for the dead for me. I responded that I was raised Catholic, and woukd prefer Extreme Unction. Then I defriended and blocked every new contact, and half of my father's side of the family! The internet is filled with bad candy and strangers in shabby cars.

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    1. Oh, Laurence. You are the only person I have ever met who could make me laugh out loud with the words "Extreme Unction." I love you!

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  7. Beware of Internet "friends." Some of these stories are indeed creepy, some hilarious.
    I still get outrageous requests for help from somewhere cross the globe. I'm amazed that some people fall for this stuff, but it does happen.
    All kinds of scammers make phone calls looking to find gullible people.
    The downside of increased communication and social media.

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